


Not My Beautiful House

by Herself_nyc



Series: Bittersweets [12]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-09-07
Packaged: 2018-02-10 06:57:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 36,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2015412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Herself_nyc/pseuds/Herself_nyc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Spike goes after that dragon, he finds himself instead where he least expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: NC-17 
> 
> Story Notes: Written for Seasonal_Spuffy on Livejournal. Spoilers for all of BtVS and Angel. Set post Not Fade Away. Some functional knowledge of my fic series The Bittersweets through All Merry & Bright will add to one's pleasure in this story, and to life in general, but is not mandatory. 
> 
> Disclaimer: All hail Joss from whom all these characters flow. 
> 
> Completed: March, 2006. 
> 
> Thanks: To The Deadly Hook, reader and commentator extraordinaire, who keeps me from committing the more atrocious errors of taste. Some of the dialogue points in here were her idea too. I steal only from the best.

You may tell yourself  
This is not my beautiful house!

You may tell yourself

This is not my beautiful wife!

You may ask yourself

Am I right?... Am I wrong?

You may say to yourself

MY GOD!...WHAT HAVE I DONE?

—David Byrne

 

The wind from the dragon's fiery breath hurled the tails of Spike's leather up over his head, blinding him as he swung out hard with the sword, but he felt it connect, felt it slice through hard plate and muscle as the air went hotter than hell and he couldn't feel anything else, not the hilt in his fists, not his feet on the ground, not the ringing in his ears, nothing.

Then he came down—phwoom!—on his back, jerking and struggling, and sat straight up with a cry. He'd lost hold of the sword, he'd lost hold of—

—the place.

He wasn't in the alley.

No dragon, no demon hordes, no driving rain, no Old Blue, no Charlie, no Angel.

He was in a bed.

"Talk about bloody abrupt transitions," Spike muttered. "This's straight outta that 2001 flick."

He was in a bed in a room that felt strangely familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

Suburban silence reigned. A lot of votive candles flickered all around, and the windows were made of dark stained glass. He could feel the afternoon sun hitting their outsides. He smelled ... smells that confused him.

The bed was large. Large enough for two. Beside him, the covers were thrown back, the pillow dented. Someone else had risen first—some hours ago—and left the room.

Before he could begin to suss out what the fuck was going on, footsteps clattered outside the door, which burst open with a bang, and something crashed onto his chest hard enough to knock the speaking air from his lungs.

"Papapapapapa! Mamma says get up now so you can watch me!"

The kid—kid!—was all smiles. He was halfway to wrestling free of the covers so he could throw her off when she leaned in and planted a big wet one right on his cheek. She was all warm and glowing with life, and she smelled like—again he shied from knowing what the smells here meant. "Horsie, Papa?"

Spike sat up. More gently than he would've done a moment before, he pushed the little girl away—and dismissed the fleeting thought of how succulent she'd be, as a lick of hunger awoke in his belly.

Was he parked in some Wolfram & Hart holding dimension? Right next door to Angel's pal Lindsey in the Subdivision of You Are So Very Fucked? Was the kiddie sent in to summon him down to the cellar to get his heart carved out?

Looked that way, didn't it?

The kid screamed. "I wanna horsie! Horsie!"

"No bloody horsie. Quiet."

He started to get out of bed, then realized he was naked.

"Trot yourself on out of here. Give a bloke some privacy."

The girl looked disappointed, but she scrambled down obediently enough. At the door, she glanced over her shoulder, clearly expecting him to relent and summon her back for a romp.

"Go on. Shoo."

When he heard her clattering downstairs, calling out "Maaamaaa, Papa won't play with me!", Spike got up, and found his clothes—at least, some clothes, which might've been his except they weren't exactly what he'd been wearing a little while ago, in the alley. But the jeans and boots were his brand, and they fit him. He found tee shirts in a drawer that fit him too. And on the dresser he saw his silver Zippo, and beside it, a thin black leather wallet. Inside, some money, a single credit card, and a California drivers' license with his picture, identifying him as Mr William Grieves of Revello Drive, Sunnydale. Licensed to drive a motorcycle, but not an organ donor.

Revello Drive.

He looked more closely at the room. Bloody hell. No wonder it felt familiar.

The furnishings were different, the window glass, everything. But it was Joyce Summer's room. Buffy's room, those last few months of his residence in the basement, not that he was ever inside it then.

Those Wolfram & Hart bastards sure knew how to stick it to you. They knew, they knew fucking everything, and used it.

Dressed, he looked out into the upstairs hall. It wasn't much different than he remembered it, though again the smells weren't what he recalled from those crowded, anxious days. This house wasn't filled to the rafters with teen girls on the rag; the air didn't smell like constantly-refreshed worry. As he hesitated, the door to Buffy's old room opened. A woman, wearing a bathrobe, a towel draped over her shoulder, came out.

Seeing him, she looked up and beamed. "Hey, Spike. Sleep well? Are you—are you—are you about to go into the bathroom?"

Tara. It was Tara, who was more than two years dead.

God, she was so beautiful. All serene and majestic and ... he wanted to reach for her. The goodness shone off her like a radiance.

Was she supposed to be the kiddie's mum, then? Was he supposed to be—?

The kid reappeared then, at a run, and dashed herself against Tara's legs. "AuntieTaracanIwatchyoutakeabath?"

"I'm not going to take a bath. I'm in a hurry today, I have to go to an interview, and then I have a date." For some reason Spike couldn't fathom, Tara winked at him. "I thought you were going to hang out with your Papa for a little."

"Papa won't play horsie."

Tara smoothed the girl's hair, and threw him a laughing glance. "You'll have to negotiate that for yourself, Jemmie. I can't be late today."

"Can't be late today. Can't be late today. Auntie Tara can't be late today." Singing, the kid began to march around them, in and out in a figure eight, stamping down hard with each step, waving her arms.

"Spike, excuse me," Tara said, moving towards the bathroom door. A new fear gripped him—what if she was The First? What if all that was begun over again?

Feigning awkwardness, he seized her arm.

She glanced up. "What?"

"N-nuthin', love. Your towel was slipping."

She was solid. Real, then, as anything here was. So, nix on The First Evil, back to the Holding Dimension Hypothesis.

Kid was a noisy little bit. Now that Tara was disappeared behind the bathroom door, the girl was butting up against his legs, bouncing like a nutter. Without thinking, Spike showed her some fang to get her to shut up.

She only threw her head back and laughed, reaching up for him with starfishing hands. "Pick me up, Papa!"

Why was he here? What did it mean? Was Angel dead, and the others? Was the battle over? Or on hold? Or still raging on while he was diverted on this loopy detour? The kid was practically climbing his jeans now. "Funny face again!"

"No more funny face. Where's your mother?" Who's your mother? He tried to put her off; she clung. Didn't like touching her. All his prior experience with picking up little girls ended in dropping their drained corpses.

The child was oblivious to his mood, and resumed her purposeful purposeless marching. "Kitching. Getting ready to go out."

He wanted to sprint, to catch her. See who she was—see ... see if it was Buffy. Must be, because that would be the worst thing they could set up in this Fun House of Sentimental Horrors.

But Spike found he couldn't move. Nothing supernatural holding him back; just garden-variety fear and a surge of some terrible longing and regret and desire that came up out of his still heart and for a moment, swamped him. His vision darkened; he couldn't feel his body.

It was the sound of the back door slamming, a car starting up, that brought him back to himself.

Kiddie's mum, whoever she was, had left the building.

For a moment he stood listening to the shower, and the little girl's chanting. Then the water went off; he heard Tara moving around in the bathroom. His throat was a knot. He was losing time here. He didn't know if he'd really slain the dragon, or if slaying it had turned the tide of battle. Angel and the others needed him, if they weren't already dead. He had to get back. He had to tell Tara he didn't belong here, that he must be sent back into the melee. Maybe Tara and Willow could work it. Willow must be around the place somewhere, if Tara was. They could return him to his rightful apocalypse.

The bathroom door opened. She started, finding him in the same place where she'd left him.

"Spike? Everything okay?"

He could feel her hurry. She crossed back to her room, friendly eyes on him, but clearly not wanting to pause.

"Sure, pet. Everythin's fine. You go on. Can't be late." He wasn't sure why he hesitated to speak up.

"Can't be late. And I know how much you need the place to yourselves this evening." She flashed him a smile. At the same time the child grabbed his hand, started tugging him to the stairs. "Paaaapaaaa. Let's goooo."

He didn't get it. What kind of a holding dimension scenario was this for him? The old beloved's house, yeah, fine, they'd rummaged in his past, maybe in his brain itself, and come up with that easy. But the little one, climbing him and kissing him? He'd never remotely thought of such a thing, let alone wished for it. Never wished for Glinda, sweet as she was, to be apparently lodging in the spare bedroom either. The whole set-up was just bloody odd. How'd those sick fucks imagine this, when he never did?

Downstairs was much the same too. Things were fresher—nice furniture in good repair, clean paint on the walls, rugs on the floor. Lots of toys scattered around—the little puss was clearly spoilt. No signs of imminent foreclosure and doom.

Pictures on the mantlepiece. He didn't want to look, but having once noticed them from across the room, he couldn't stop himself from drifting closer.

There was Joyce. There was Dawn, stunning in a cap and gown, having apparently survived Sunnydale High, which seemed to have survived too.

There was the little Jemmie—and there, and there, and there and there. Most photographed kid in Sunnydale, looked like.

Here she was with her Mum. A sunshine pose, outdoors so Buffy's golden hair and skin glowed as she twinkled at the camera. Her face substantially reproduced in the child's—they had the same smile. Spike stared. Buffy with a kid of her own. Never had pictured it. Couldn't believe it.

And there he was too. Holding an infant wrapped in pink—a toddler wearing a birthday crown. And in another shot, holding Buffy, clinch-style, who looked up into his face with an expression of such absorbed satisfaction that he knew this whole thing was a total sham.

When he dashed the framed photo into the hearth, Jemmie cried out as it shattered.

"Shut yer yap, you little beast! I'm onto you! I'm onto this whole bloody head trip!" Sweeping all the pictures down, he bellowed at the room, the house, the Senior Partners who must be monitoring this, controlling this. "I know what you're doing! So just fucking have at me—turn me inside out, rip out my soul, lop off my head, whatever it is—but do it straight out!"

"Spike!"

Tara was there, Jemmie cowering in her skirts. She gawped at the broken frames and shattered glass.

"What—what—what happened? Who were you shouting at?"

"I—"

A voice from the kitchen interrupted before he could begin. "Hey Spike! You here, buddy? Got something to show you."

Tara glanced around. "Xander will help you clean this up. I'm sorry, I really can't stay right now." Telling the little girl to be good and not to touch the broken things, Tara detached her and faded away, just as goddamn Harris came striding in.

Goddamn Harris, but equipped with two eyes, and about thirty pounds less than the one he'd last seen on the morning of his glorious but alas unfinal death.

This one, like the other one, entered talking. "Of course you're here, where else would you be in the middle of the afternoon? Hey Jemmie-girl. Uh—what happened here?"

"Little accident."

"I'll say. Shit." Xander squatted to survey the damage. "Did Jemmie do this? She didn't miss a single one! How'd she reach? Better clean it up before Buffy sees it anyway. I can pick you up some new frames before I go back to the site if you want."

"... uh, yeah. Yeah, that'd be right nice of you."

Xander didn't seem to notice anything amiss about Spike; he motored out to the kitchen on his own, bringing back broom and paper towels and everything else needed to clean up the broken glass, and he didn't seem to notice that Spike wasn't helping him, or that the little girl was hovering on the far side of the room in a skittish way, because she was still freaked out by how he'd roared at her. The whole time he was sweeping up, Xander talked about the job he was working on, building some mini-mall out on the edge of town. Spike didn't listen because he didn't care. Even not listening though, he had the sense that Xander was babbling because there was something else he was building up to.

It emerged when the broken glass was cleared away and they'd moved into the kitchen. Spike, ever hungrier, prowled around for a few moments before it occurred to him to check the freezer. It was half filled with blood bags (the other half was taken up with partially-eaten pints of Cherry Garcia, and neon-colored popsicles that must've been for the kiddie). Xander poured coffee as Spike heated the blood, and then all of a sudden he was at Spike's elbow, prodding him to turn and look at something in his hand.

"I've been getting nowhere just talking to her about it, like we were two sane adults, so finally I decided it was time to dazzle her. What d'you think?"

The blue box in Xander's callused hand held a diamond engagement ring of admirable size and lustre. Spike glanced at it, and then at Xander, who was eyeing him—and Spike was surprised by how weird it was, the two-eyed thing—with an expression thirsting for approval.

Xander never had wanted his approval, or sought his advice, before. Even though this was bizarro-world, he couldn't quite bring himself to take this at face value.

"What cereal box you fish that out of?"

"You may well ask. I went to LA to buy this baby."

The mention of LA, where he was supposed to be in the middle of hacking ogres to death on his way to his own dusting, brought Spike up short. Was this a clue? A hint?

"LA? An' how did you find it?"

"How I always find it. A traffic jam. I got lost three times on my way to breakfast at Tiffany's, but I got what I went for. So what do you think? Is she going to laugh in my face? I always think she's going to laugh in my face."

You nearly killed me when I fucked her, an' now you're askin' me 'bout rings for your demon bird? This was getting more surreal by the second. Spike shrugged. "Doubt any girl would laugh at that rock."

"Yeah, but you know she's not just any girl. She's—"

The microwave dinged. The sound reminded Spike again of the time. The elapsed time. He had no idea if time here was contiguous with time there, but the great thing was that he wasn't supposed to be here. He needed to get the fuck away from this place and get back to Angel's side where the action was.

"Listen—"

"Hey Spike, I know. I know you think I'm being stupid about this, but you don't know her. Under all that—that unh—she's this little girl that thinks nobody loves her."

"Anya's gonna bloody well know you're serious when she sees that. She's all about the dosh."

Xander blinked. "Anya? ... Spike ... what are you talking about?"

"Talking about—" Uh oh. Was there no Anya in this world? Then who was under discussion here?

This was the perfect opening to say his piece about being the Vamp Out Of Time. Except that Jemmie chose that moment to begin howling.

Xander, barely missing a beat, pocketed the ring box, swung Jemmie up onto a stool, and went to the fridge. "Is it okay to give her a glass of milk?"

Spike almost snapped out How should I know? before recalling who he was supposed to be. "Yeah. 'Spect that'll quiet her down."

"You thirsty, toots?" Xander smiled at the little girl with such tenderness that Spike was again distracted. This was all just so flat out weird.

When he'd given her the milk, Xander settled on his own stool and stared into his coffee. "I want to give her the ring tonight, but what if she won't take it? I mean, if she refuses this, isn't that going to mean—?"

Spike glanced up,. Had to be careful now. "Can't imagine she would."

Xander took the ring out again and studied it. "Who am I kidding? Faith doesn't even wear earrings, for Chrissakes. That pair I gave her last year, they're covered in dust an inch thick."

Faith?

This place was giving him whiplash. Had to be a different Faith. Lots of women named Faith. Must be someone else. The Senior Partners would never expect him to believe that Faith The Vampire Slayer would look twice at Xander, in any possible world.

"I don't know what she's afraid of. I mean, I do know. But I also know she wants it, what we've built together. So why can't she just—why can't she just trust, and take that final step?"

Spike buried his nose in the cup of hot blood. Why was this happening? Why was he in a place that was destroyed, among people he didn't know anymore, giving relationship advice to one of his least-liked acquaintances when he was supposed to be in a rain-swept alley battling to preserve the precious balance between good and evil?

"I mean, how difficult can it be for her to trust me? You got Buffy to trust you. You got all of us to trust you. If that's possible, anything should be!"

"Reckon so," Spike muttered.

"I'm supposed to be the Faith whisperer in our crowd, right? But she'll only come so far and no—and maybe she's thinking what's up with him that he's got to pin me down into being Mrs Harris? And yeah, I get that too. But I want her to be abso-fucking-lutely sure that I'm always hers, that I'm always there. The whole marriage thing ... I dunno ... even though my parents' marriage sucks. Marriage just seems really romantic to me."

"You're a bloody romantic guy," Spike mumbled, wondering whether he should bring up how Xander walked out on Anya at the altar. Probably not. If he just kept making encouraging noises, Xander would go away soon.

"I don't think it's the slayer thing, really. Especially now she sees how Buffy and you make it work. And I haven't breathed a word about kids. I know she's not going to want kids."

Crikey. He was talking about that Faith.

If this was a Wolfram & Hart holding dimension, why was it like this? Why'd he wake up to an afternoon of child-wrangling and coffee klatsching when the thing they ought to have done was put Buffy in bed with him straight away. That would've made him forget the battle in no time flat.

None of this made any sense.

It was time to speak up. If this was some kind of prison, saying so out loud wouldn't make any difference, and if it wasn't, they could get going on figuring out how to send him back to his rightful place—and find the Spike who presumably got to live this existence as his rightful one, mind-blowing as that was.

He was about to interrupt Xander, who was still wittering on about his love troubles, when his eye fell on some photos stuck to the fridge with magnets.

Four shots of him and Buffy. They were in a photo booth strip, like you found at a fun fair. She was clearly sitting on his lap in the booth. Kissing him, and laughing. Laughing not in derision or contempt, but with delight. She looked radiantly beautiful, in some kind of off the shoulder top, her hair loose, and he was beautiful too, mussed by her fingers, eyes shining. Looking at those little black and white squares, he almost experienced the slipping weight of her giggling body on his, the moist warmth of her nibbling mouth, the sensation of her hands caressing his neck and face. She'd smell like sweat and shampoo and taste of whatever seaside junk she'd been eating—caramel corn, hot dogs. He'd never known her happy the way she so obviously was in these images. Never knew her to look at him like that.

His eye fell on something else. A folded piece of memo paper with an 'S' scrawled on it, tacked with a magnet near the photo strip. He couldn't think why he hadn't spotted it sooner.

The note said:

Happy anniversary, lover. Jemmie gets picked up at 5:00 and I'll be back by six. Be in bed. —B.

Anniversary?!

Spike stared, his eyes bobbling back and forth between lover and bed. It was her writing, though he couldn't imagine Buffy scribbling those words with him in her mind. Not unless she was under some kind of seriously heavy spell. He was hard instantly, aching for her.

He wanted to see her. The Buffy in those pictures, the Buffy who'd written this note, he had to wait here until she returned. All the love he held for her, in no way diminished though he'd firmly put it aside, took him over again as entirely as it ever had. He wanted her like blood, like sleep, like poetry and beauty. She was all those things. She was his soul.

Even though it would be a million times harder afterwards to announce that he was misplaced.

This was wicked, he knew that. His hard-won conscience blazed up at the idea of tricking her for his pleasure. But even reformed he was still Spike, his mind still ran as ever to what he could get away with, what would gratify him.

Even as he knew he must return to the battle, he wanted this one impossible chance to hold a completely willing Buffy in his arms. To kiss her ... to—his mind ran ahead—to undress her and have her, slowly and every which way, upstairs in that big bed, with no shame on her part, no reserve haunting her tired eyes.

Oh bloody fucking hell yes. Couldn't he wait around for that? How likely was it, even if he spoke up now, that they could return him to the alley? Or that time there was running the same way? For one thing, it was daytime when he awoke here, but the battle he'd left was going on at night. If they could get him back there, maybe they could put him down right where he'd left. Or sooner. Maybe they could put him somewhere where he could make a strategic difference.

Yeah. Like that. So what harm if he waited a bit, to see her? If he raised the Scooby alarm now, he'd have no chance with Buffy.

God damn.

"Papa, down!" Jemmie cried.

Absently, still focused on his fantasy, Spike lifted the girl down off the high stool. She scampered out of the room. Xander rose then too, put his coffee cup in the dishwasher. "I'd better go if I'm going to pick up those frames. I'll be back in an hour, okay? Get here before Buffy does."

"Yeah, okay," Spike said. "Uh, thanks." Watching Xander go to the door, he wondered how it possibly could've come about that any version of himself, any version of Xander, could be friends. Leaving aside that Xander loathed him, he'd always loathed Xander. The kid was a witless fuck-up, and despite his tendency to attract demon girls, a hopeless mundane. Why would Wolfram & Hart think he'd believe in this friendship he never sought? Though they apparently expected him to believe that Buffy left him little mash-notes in the kitchen.

Fucking hell. Gonna believe six impossible things before breakfast.

Yet when Xander paused to smile and wave as he went out, Spike's heart lifted.

No one in his LA life ever did anything like that.

 

"Papa, I have to go potty."

He was rifling Buffy's desk when the tug came on his jeans leg.

"Now."

"Bloody hell. So go on then, Bit. Go."

She frowned. "You have to take me."

"I have to—what?"

"Paaaa-pa. Stop fooling." She danced a little, holding her crotch.

"All right then." Scooping her up, taking the stairs in threes, he wondered: how was this possible? What Buffy in her right mind would try to raise a kid while cohabiting with him? And how did she get pregnant anyhow? Couldn't be his. Sperm donor? He couldn't get his mind around it.

At least the girl didn't expect him to pull her pants down. He had to lift her onto the toilet though, and then didn't know whether to turn his back or not. In all his decades of experience, this had never come up.

He wanted to get back to the desk; he'd just found a diary in one of the drawers, and had high hopes there'd be some useful information in it.

But now she was on the can, young Jemmie seemed more interested in singing and kicking her little red-shoed feet than in doing her business.

Finally she produced the necessary. Spike carried her back down to the desk. The diary was intriguingly scrawled in the same handwriting as the note. But it only went back to the beginning of the year—five months.

The diary read like an outline for one of those chick novels Harmony used to read listlessly during off moments—Shopping and Fucking books, they were called. The accounts of slaying were perfunctory—she seemed to have a system of symbols to indicate the various spots and what she'd killed there, but the new clothes and their apparently constant screwing were outlined with relish. They did it, as far as he could tell, every day, and everywhere, and everyhow. And while they did, he sometimes said things to her that she saw fit to jot down afterwards—endearments, bawdy compliments. Their lovemaking, daily as it was, didn't jade her; she recorded it happily just as she wrote about Jemmie's cute sayings, the sale at 9 West, the new TV shows she liked, how she'd cut herself wittling stakes, the recipe she'd tried ... it was, Spike realized, as he turned over page after page, actually supremely dull. A day-to-day record of a contented life. If there was a Big Bad brewing, she didn't mention it.

He brought the book up to his face and inhaled hard. It smelled like her ... but more and more he couldn't bring himself to believe in this so-called reality. A scenario of Buffy-and-Spike-Livin'-La-Vida-Doméstica was far far wackier than if he'd been asked to believe that she was a whore and he was her pimp, or ... or even the other way around.

He knew about alternate universes, every demon did. But this ... this one was just too damn improbable.

A knock came at the front door.

He opened it to Faith.

"Hey," she said, shuffling in, her hands in her pockets. She looked pretty much as he remembered her. Same style, same stance, though she was curiously subdued at the moment. Looked worried. "B here?"

"Gone out."

"Oh."

Jemmie came thundering up; Faith lifted and swung her towards the ceiling, which produced a shriek of delight from the child. "Hey girlfren, whatcha doin'?"

"Papa an' me are hanging out."

"How's that going?"

"Papa's in a bad mood."

Faith looked towards him, an eyebrow raised. "You're in a bad mood? That makes two of us," she said. "You got any coffee?"

"If Xander didn't drink it all."

"He was here?" She started towards the kitchen. This was starting to feel like a soap opera.

"Yeah, an' he'll be back soon."

"Shit." She was frowning now like she had a migraine coming on. "This is so fucked up."

"What's fucked up?"

She studied him for a moment, then shrugged. "I was gonna ask B, but what the hell. You'll do. I happen to know Xander went and blew some very large bills on buying me a fucking ring. A diamond! Now how in the hell am I going to fend that off?"

"Why fend it off at all."

"Fuck that noise."

"He loves you."

"Why can't—things are good like they are. Hell, they're better by about a million percent than I ever thought my piss poor life would be. So why's he got to fuck it up by shoving marriage proposals at me?"

A soap opera. That's what this was. They'd taken all the people he used to know, and stuck them into this insanely absurd scenario, starring himself as a desperate housewife confined inside 1630 while the sun was out and forced to field endless visits from lovelorn walk-ons. Maybe the sun was always out. Maybe that was where it turned into hell—the sun always out, the doorbell always ringing, Buffy always gone, the kidlet always needing the toilet. Forever.

Faith was sitting now on Xander's stool, similarly staring into a coffee mug.

"I can't do this. I can't take the ring, can't get fuckin' hitched. But if I don't ... Spike, I can't lose him. I can't."

"So don't. Why's it got to be so complicated? Wear the ring, say the words, go on bein' yourself."

"FUCK."

Her face twisted in exasperation. Looking at her, shooting anxiety like sparks in the bright kitchen, Spike remembered when he was in a similar state—back before he gave up on Buffy, gave up on romantic love. No one had loved him for a long time, and he'd stopped expecting that to change. Getting a soul made him less lovable, he felt, not more. In the last year he hadn't stopped wanting and revering Buffy, he'd just stopped maintaining even the thinnest glimmer of hope that she'd ever want him, or that she even should. He didn't wish to see her, or for her to know he still existed. He liked thinking that by staying behind in the hellmouth, he'd made her nice new Spike-free life possible, but mostly he didn't even think about that.

It was easier in a lot of ways, but ... but there was still something to be said for what Faith was fighting so shy of.

"Sometimes greater part of valour is capitulatin'."

"What?"

"Just sayin', pet. Know it's nuthin' a vampire or a slayer wants to hear."

"I don't know how to—" Suddenly she punched the countertop. The tiled surface cracked like ice beneath her fist; Jemmie let out a wail and grabbed his leg.

Faith stared, and wrung her hand. "Shit, man. Sorry."

"Better that than Xander's face. You be nice to him when he gives you that rock, all right? Least you can do."

"Least I can do," Faith echoed, sounding dazed. "Shit. I'd better go."

"Yeah. Do."

He was glad to see the back of her; was in no mood to field her and Xander in the same place at the same time.

As it turned out, Xander drove up five minutes after Faith drove off.

"S'like Bloody King's Cross Terminal in here," Spike muttered.

Xander with the picture frames was like Xander at work. He quickly sorted frames and photos by size, matched them up; his hands were deft as he removed the backs, fitted the pictures into the frames, adjusted the glass, replaced the backs. He handed them one by one to Spike, to replace on the mantlepiece.

He couldn't recall the order they were in, and anyway, Buffy was bound to notice sometime that they weren't exactly the same frames. He really didn't want to handle these pictures anymore. The life they depicted wasn't his, and shouldn't be. He was being fooled about, tricked and tempted. He was quite possibly going to betray his comrades and his own conscience by staying here longer than he might have to, because even now he was still weak and susceptible. A perfect pawn for whatever game the Partners were playing with him.

Buffy would be back in less than ninety minutes, and the thought of being able to take her in his arms made Spike feel weak and desperate and lit up with anticipation. Even if she was a hoax, or just a substitute like the Buffybot, he was still fool enough to desire that toy consolation.

His task finished, Xander, suddenly solemn, offered Spike a hand. He hesitated for a moment, then put his own out to accept Xander's clasp. "Congratulations, man."

"You did all the work."

"Not about the pictures, you dummy. Congratulations on the anniversary. Never thought I'd say it, let alone as often as I do, but you're good for the Buffster. So, many happy returns and all that."

"Ah ... yeah. Thanks."

"I'd better go get started if I'm ever going to have an anniversary of my own."

"Good luck with that," Spike said, thinking Xander certainly wasn't in for a pleasant evening. For a second Spike considered warning him, but quickly decided it was none of his business. Even if he was the Spike who belonged in this place, better to keep quiet. But he wasn't, and since when did he give a tinker's about Xander? Let him suffer.

When the door closed, the house felt curiously still. Spike stood in the foyer for a few moments, listening, inhaling. The whole house smelled like Buffy, and like the little girl, whose aroma was similar to her mother's, but sweeter, with that sweetness of preadolescence, before the pores got bunged up and the sweat turned rank. The scent of little girl children had always roused his appetite; now it just made him uneasy.

Where was she, anyhow? He recalled with a start that he was supposed to be in charge of her. Sick joke that that was. And she was being entirely too quiet.

He found Jemmie stretched out under a table in the back room, asleep on her belly with a toy truck clutched in her hand. Might be just as well to leave her there; he wanted to reconnoiter a bit more while he had the place to himself, so he returned to the bedroom he'd awakened in.

The candles had burned down some; he could see that they were kept more or less perpetually burning, but he couldn't sense any magic about them. Just for the crypt-y atmosphere, then. Right. Anyway, their flickering glow was plenty bright enough for him to see everything in the place.

In her jewelry box, amidst huge jumbles of costume stuff, some of which he was startled to find familiar, he saw the big silver skull ring he'd used to engage himself to her under Willow's spell. Odd enough that she'd hung onto it, he was gobsmacked to realize that it was strung on a chain, which suggested she sometimes wore it around her neck. How much more of this were they going to expect him to swallow?

The big closet was almost entirely full of her clothes. The Eau De Slayer they gave off when he flung open the doors was overpowering; he was engulfed by nostalgia, and hard again in his jeans.

There were some more photos, too, hanging on the wall. But these weren't of her and hers; they were old, sepia-toned. He had to stare at them for a bit before the faces, in unfamiliar circumstances, swam up to greet his comprehension.

His sisters. Sisters? A sick feeling gripped his temples; he blinked, tried to gather his thoughts. Sisters. Yes, of course he'd had sisters. Hadn't he ...? When he tried to place them, with him, in their old home, everything went foggy. He couldn't see it. Yet as the three solemn faces in the stiffly posed portrait wavered in and out of familiarity, he knew it was true.

He couldn't find their names. The confusion burned at him, like acid in the gut. He remembered his mother, remembered coming home to her with Drusilla, remembered what had happened that night. Didn't he? Because they'd brought all that back to him with that worm in the stone spell. But now he couldn't bring to mind anything else about his human life. All those things he'd left behind when he was turned—it never occurred to him that he'd forgotten, because he just wasn't in the habit of reflecting back on them. So that now, as he looked at the three still young ladies, with their arms clasped about each other's waists—and at the little girl in the pinafore, who was a younger version of the youngest one, serious and intelligent looking like Tenniel's Alice—and at the wedding daguerrotype of the clergyman and his young wife who must be his parents—Spike's mind twirled and heaved, trying to fight off what was flooding in. Memories so far blotted out he wasn't even aware of their loss.

He looked and looked, and the more he did, the less sure he was of anything from the human past.

What were their names? If he could get the bloody names, then maybe ... backing away, he sat down hard on the unmade bed. Why were they messing him about like this? This wasn't in the brochure. Hadn't he done his duty? Got his soul, made his sacrifice, come back against his will and yet gone right back into the good fight? So why this?

Why was it so painful, seeing those faces that had come so unstuck from him?

They'd died ahead of him. He knew that much—knew it all at once from scratch, with the sudden awful blow of a telegram delivered on a wintery afternoon. He'd loved those girls, and lost them before he ever stumbled out and lost himself. What were their blasted names?

"Jemmie! Jemima!"

Bloody fucking hell! Spike leapt up, went back to the pictures. Jemima—that was the little girl in the pinafore. His favorite sister, his particular darling. The other two were older than him, but she was younger. She was the last, the family's treasure.

When she died, everything was ruined.

Buffy had named her daughter Jemima.

The voice shrilled out again. "Where is your father? Where are you? Jemima!" It was followed by steps, and a moment later Anya loomed in the doorway—amazing how such a slip of a woman could loom. In one arm she held the Cuisinart he'd noticed in Buffy's kitchen. "Here you are! Well? Where's the kid?"

"She—"

"You were supposed to have her ready, Spike. We're in a hurry too, you know."

"Where're you goin' with that?"

"You know this is mine. Buffy needs to learn to return things when she borrows them. How am I supposed to make that ratatouille Rupert likes when my Cuisinart is at your house?"

"Oh. Yeah. Well. Kiddie was havin' her nap downstairs, little while ago. 'Spect your bellowin's roused her."

Wait a tick—Rupert?

He was about to open his mouth when Jemmie entered at her habitual shot-from-canons trajectory, a towel trailing behind her.

"AuntieAnyaAuntieAnyaAuntieAnyalookatmeI'mSuperman!"

"You certainly are. Are you ready to go?"

"Anya, you cook for Rupert ... uh, often?"

Her look could have burned through titanium. "What are you implying? I take very good care of my husband! Ask anyone! Ask him!"

Her husband? It was all Spike could do not to burst out laughing. Giles and Anya!

Soap Opera World really was the Land Of The Mismatched Couples, wasn't it? Too right. Next thing would be Tara coming back in hand in hand with Warren.

"Not implyin' anything, love."

"Well, good. You don't want to alienate me when you expect me to babysit so often." Seizing Jemima's hand, Anya turned. "I can't stand here chatting, Rupert is waiting in the car. Come along, sweetheart."

Giles was outside. Giles, who ought to be told, if he told anyone, that something was wonky in Wonkland. Giles, who'd know how to rally the mind and muscle that might be able to get him back to his own place.

Giles, who'd set him up to be killed by Wood.

Giles, who wouldn't send help when Angel called up and asked for it.

Well, fuck Giles. Didn't want to see him now. Wanted to just stay here and wait for what was going to happen next, what the decks were so clearly being cleared for. The return of the fake Buffy of this fake world ... this fake beautiful world where they were all friends and all getting on with things. He'd wait for that Buffy to come home and smile at him.

After that, maybe, the abyss. But he'd have it first. 

 

He reread the note. Be in bed.

That would mean, presumably, being naked.

The way he was when he first found himself here.

On reflection, Spike decided that wasn't such a good idea. He didn't know who or what was going to come through the door next, and even if it was only Buffy—some version of Buffy—well, she was a slayer, wasn't she? Best to be careful if he wanted to go on not-breathing and see this through.

Anyway, he was too restless to just lie down and look pretty. Pacing the room, he went on poking into things, opening drawers, peering under the bed.

There was a chest there, like the one Buffy had once used to keep weapons in.

This one was full of toys, not the kind for Jemima. Restraints—chains, ropes, silk scarves, cuffs of various types—vibrators—he wondered when she found the time to need those, what with the pace they supposedly kept up—clamps and blindfolds and ... a hefty strap-on. Crikey, Spike thought, does she go at me with that? All at once he was revved up again, even more than he'd been when he opened the closet door to that perfumed forest of Buffywear. A sniff at the article in question confirmed that, yes indeed, she wore it—it was clean but still smelled plainly enough to his keen senses of her cunny. That aroma, long-lost and mourned, set him into a tremble of anticipation. He couldn't keep from handling himself through his jeans—would've unzipped and tossed off right there, except for wanting to be vigilant.

Instead, he shoved the chest back where he'd found it, and circled the room again, rubbing his crotch even as he willed his cock to relax. For the first time it occurred to him to wonder: how? If this was real—as real in its place as his experience was in his own—how had it come about? What was different to make Buffy want to cozy up with him like this? Back when they'd had their thing, she'd never let him have her in the house, let alone in her bed. And when she came to his crypt, she'd almost never just get into bed there either. Never wanted anything they did to be the least bit tender or romantic. Her every touch was rough and hard ... and exquisite for it, but still not ... not what he could never teach himself to stop yearning for. Even at the end, when she'd spent those couple of nights lying beside him. She'd let him hold her. But she hadn't held him.

He couldn't imagine a Buffy who'd live with him like a wife, noting anniversaries, leaving lovey notes. Which seemed to prove what he'd suspected all along: this was a construct. He'd been put here by some power greater than himself—it was just like when he'd awakened in that white cell in the Initiative. He was being manipulated, that was all.

It was his heart and head, not his cock, that hardened now. Yeah. He'd do a little manipulating in return. He'd get what he wanted out of her, and then he'd find out just what the hell the game was, and how to get out.

Too right.

Just as he reached this decision, he heard the kitchen door open and close. He recognized her step; she crossed the kitchen, the dining room. He heard her on the stairs. This was it. Taking up a position at the far side of the room, the bed between him and the door, he braced himself. Ready.

She reached the top of the stairs, and stopped. He could hear her heart beat—it was going pretty fast. She only paused for a moment, but he wondered about that moment. What was she doing?

She muttered something he couldn't catch. A soft sound, something sifting to the floor, followed by a stifled clinking. Imagining what weapon might make a sound like that, Spike brought up his fangs.

Then she was in the doorway, leaning shoulder against the jamb. Her hair was loose; she was clad in nothing but strappy high-heeled sandals, and pale green lingerie so wispy that he could see her nipples and the dark shadow of her cunny hair through the silk. The sight literally defanged him. He stared, rooted to the spot. A big bottle of Krug was insufficiently concealed behind her back. The pair of champagne flutes in her right hand scraped together again as she held them up; she was trembling. "Lover, I brought you something for our—" Seeing the empty tossled bed, and him standing on the far side of it, her smile, brilliant for a moment, died. Suddenly she looked as deflated as her daughter when he'd frightened her. "God, I totally suck at this. What is it? What's the matter?" Dropping the glasses and bottle amidst the sheets, she came to him, tottering a little as if her ankles were watery.

Spike was startled by his own voice, saying "Nothin', nothin's the matter," and by his arms, which were around her in a moment. She pressed against him, circling his neck with her own delicious arms. Her scent overwhelmed him—the Buffybot, who did like to throw herself against him this way, hadn't smelled like the real Buffy. But this—this was her, in every way his senses could determine. Oh God, it was Buffy.

Except it wasn't, because never in his wildest dreams had she behaved this way.

"Why are you wearing so many clothes? Didn't you see my note? I wanted, you know ... for this to be romantic. Like what people do on anniversaries."

"Saw your note, sure I did. Just—lost track of the time a bit. You're beautiful." He put her back to look at her, and to try to pull himself together. All his resolve, about being hard and playing the players' game back at them, was dissolving into nothingness in the face of this woman looking at him with such uncertainty and—yearning. When had Buffy ever yearned at him?

Never. Never never, and why should it affect him like this? This whole thing was false.

Christ, this was confusing. This was doing his head in.

Now at his words, she glanced down at herself. "You don't like my outfit? I went out to get it special, because I saw it in a magazine and I thought, you know ... I thought ... I was even planning to do a little dance ...." At this she blushed, magnificently, bright red that spread up from her breasts, blotching up her neck and into her already bright cheeks. "I thought—"

Head spinning, Spike went to sit on the bed. What was he doing? He couldn't—shouldn't—mustn't—go through with this.

But how could he not? How, when she followed him, nestling onto his lap, nuzzling his neck—and this was like that time they were under a spell, but it wasn't either, because she'd been strange then, they both were, like they were reading a silly script. He could feel that this was real to her, she was het up and ready for him. A ticklish thought crossed his mind—was this really what Buffy was like, when she was in love? Had she been like this with Angel? All girlish and confiding and wanting and unsure of herself? He felt like a peeping Tom, watching under false pretenses. She was some fellow's girl, that was for sure, but not his. Not his.

Her fingers strayed beneath the waistband of his jeans, beneath his shirt, tugging it undone as her lips did amazing things to his neck. Her voice, all breathy and languid, whispered in his ear. "Happy anniversary, Spike."

Remembering the champagne, he reached back for it. Opening it would provide a diversion.

"This was thoughtful of you, pet. You thirsty?"

"I'll open it. Why don't you get naked?"

Getting naked was just what he didn't want to do. Getting naked would lead to fucking her, and—

He could just tell her the truth. Right now, just stand up and announce himself. And then that would be that; she'd put some clothes on. She'd probably beat him up too, which would have the ring of familiarity, at least.

She'd taken the bottle from his hand, and slid off his lap to sit beside him while she wrestled with the foil covering the cork. She was so bloody earnest. As she worked, she started to babble, "Can you believe five years? I mean, us! Five years! I looked up what the 5-year anniverary gift is, and it's wood. Isn't that funny? I figured that would send the wrong message, you know, if I gave you—but then I figured you'd get wood if I went to La Perla and wore ... right?" She glanced around at him, tipping him a wink with her play on words. The cork sounded with the harsh suddenness of gunfire; Spike felt like he'd been hit.

To his surprise, Buffy ignored the glasses; took a swig straight from the bottle, and handed it to him.

This was like being trapped inside a kaleidoscope. One moment she was Buffy, and the next she was some stranger wearing her skin—and what skin!—who sounded like her but didn't act like her. Except that as soon as he managed to convince himself of that, he'd ricochet back to feeling her, wanting her, not caring whether this was true or not. Taking the bottle, he sipped slowly, drinking her in, trying to decide what to do.

With a sigh he couldn't quite interpret, she crawled higher up on the bed, stretched out. Raised a bent leg lazily, and touched the thin strip of silk that ran beneath. "This is getting pretty moist," she murmured thoughtfully, as if it was a problem, like a leaky sink, she wanted to prompt some help with.

"You look ... you look like bloody heaven." As stalling tactics went, he felt, this was lame.

But she smiled, a smile that scorched his poor heart like sunrise.

He swallowed some more. The surreality of this was off the charts.

"Let's take a bit of inventory, shall we pet?"

"Inventory."

There were things he wanted to know. Even though this was all an illusion, he wanted to know what the story of it was. It would kill him, but he was going to ask.

"Of our year, yeah? Seein' as it's our fifth anniversary."

"Okay." She sat up readily, crossed her legs. The sandals were very strappy, and very high. They were gold. Her toenails were freshly painted a sparkly pink. The sight of them about did him in.

"Have I made you happy, then, this year?"

Her eyelashes dipped; she looked at her hands, then up at him in a way reminiscent of one made famous by Lauren Bacall. "What do you think?"

"Want you to tell me."

She reached out. "I'd rather show you. Why aren't you naked yet?"

"Tell me."

"I'm gonna take an inventory of you." Seizing the stuff of his teeshirt in both hands, she yanked it up and off before he could stop her. "I've been thinking about this for weeks. We're gonna go nice, and slow, and thorough, and did I mention slow? Because this is special."

"Special, yeah, cause usually—"

"Usually," she supplied, "we go fast. And rough."

This was starting to sound like that old Ike and Tina record.

"You always liked fast and rough," he said. You wouldn't have me any other way.

"I do like it. But it isn't all I like, right?" She'd eased him onto his back, was hovering over him—not straddling, but kneeling beside, and her fingers were in his hair, smoothing it gently back from his forehead in a way that made him shiver. "Remember how we were doing it that night I first told you? Remember that?"

Told me what? "How could I forget?"

"I was thinking it would be good if we could do it like that. So slow and tender I thought I'd explode. You did it for me that night but now I'm gonna do it for you."

This at least was a relief, as he had no clue what it consisted of, and was sure to get it wrong.

"I think about that every year. You know. What we celebrate as our anniversary—and it's just as good an anniversary thing as any, isn't it? And the bad thing Willow did to you after, now it's over, that just makes it mean more anyway, right?"

"Right," Spike breathed. He was running his hands softly up and down her arms, a touch he'd always craved and only rarely been permitted. Buffy smiled at him, a smile that went all through him, that made him hard and incandescent with desire. His hand was on her shoulder; she nuzzled it with her cheek, and kissed it.

"I'm talking too much, but I want you to know. I want you to know, Spike. I don't take any of this for granted. What you give me. What we are together. I love you so much."

"An' I love you. Love you, Buffy, always have, always will. With all my mind an' my heart an' my soul."

She frowned, and for a moment he thought she was going to pull away, but then her brow cleared and she came in close for a kiss; his arms went around her, and the separate things they'd been doing and saying sped up and blended together into the one thing, no more talking, just kissing. He kept expecting her to sit on him, to wrench his head up, bite his mouth, the way she used to, but Buffy still seemed intent on her promise of going slow. She permitted him to kiss her in the way he'd always wanted but never had—without hurry or escalation, with time to taste her and feel the softness of her mouth, the flavor of her tongue. She made kittenish noises, caressed his face with unbruising fingers.

This was so good. Too damn good. Any second now, he thought, they'll do it. Whatever it is they've brought me here for, they've got me good and pinned and now it'll happen.

Maybe she was going to suck his soul out through his mouth, and send him to hell. That would be about right.

This idea was suddenly so strong in him that he shuddered. Put her aside and sat up.

"Christ—!"

"Spike—what's the matter?"

He cried out to the ceiling, to the room, to the Senior Partners. "Just do it, all right? Just bloody do it, or else put me back an' let your filthy army trample me—whatever—but no more of this!"

Nothing happened, no thunderbolt, no rumbling voice, no sudden transposition to the White Room.

Just Buffy in her pretty lingerie, awash in alarm, reaching for him. "Spike, what is it, what's going on?" She glanced around, then lunged for the nightstand, where she pulled a stake out of the top drawer. "Who's in here? What do you see?"

He was on his feet now. Glad he still had his jeans, and relieved that she'd armed herself. That was the proper way for them to talk.

"Thing is ... I'm Spike, yeah, but I'm not your Spike. Think we've been switched. Leastways, I belong somewhere else."

He expected her to rush him, but she stayed where she was, kneeling in the center of the bed, blinking, bewildered.

"A few hours ago. Right before you left the house. I came to myself here in this bed. But before that—I was in LA, fightin' 'longside Angel and his people—apocalypse situation. An' I hadn't seen you in a year. We weren't ... we aren't ... Something happened. Dimensions were intersecting—ghoul armies on the march—you can imagine. Guess I got sidetracked somehow."

"Oh my God."

"You believe me, yeah?"

She shook her head, but it wasn't a negation.

"Should've spoken up sooner, I know. But—I wanted to see you. Wanted to see Buffy who loved her Spike, because ... because ... it's not like this where I—"

Buffy held up a hand; he stopped talking. Slowly, fiercely, she stood up. Here was the girl he knew. He found himself exhaling, and suddenly wanted a cigarette, as if they'd just finished something heavy together.

"So—what? You're from the world without shrimp?"

"Got shrimp, all right, I suppose." He'd never much cared for shellfish. "What it hasn't got is you an' me bein'—"

She interrupted. "Why didn't you tell someone sooner? You've been here for hours, I know Xander was here, Anya was here—"

"Saw Faith too," he admitted.

"And you kept quiet."

"Told you why," Spike mumbled. "You know ... even you ought to know ... how I am about you." She was advancing on him, the stake in her fist. He raised his hands, palms open. "Not here to do anything to you an' yours, Buffy. Seem to be victim of circumstance, or ... thought I'd been bunged into a Wolfram an' Hart holdin' dimension. Didn't know who to trust."

"What does that mean? Wolfram and Hart Holding Dimension?"

"Look, it's a long story."

She flashed him the old stink eye, that he knew so well. "Weirdly enough, I buy that you really are alterna!Spike, because you're just self-centered and dumb enough to forget that if you're here, my Spike must be there. Didn't that occur to you? Or did you just not care? Because that would be like you too."

"Yeah, only—"

"And that I might really really be anxious about getting him back? Seeing as how I'm used to him, and he's the father of my kid? Shit. I find out there's a you in every dimension, and apparently you all think with your cocks."

"Look, I—"

"Shut up. I could so stake you right now, you stupid vampire."

She went to the phone.

As he listened to her talking to Giles, Spike was swamped with a stunning nostalgia, and loneliness. He'd had no idea how much he missed even this, the intimacy of her contempt—stupid vampire—the comradery of the Scoobies, the house itself, small and warm and human—not like the outsize glass and steel environs of the law firm or the dingy basement flat he'd occupied the last few months, alone. When he'd been here, he was part of something in a way he wasn't in LA. Sure, they let him play his role, but none of them was fond of him, none of them really gave a shit. Buffy might not have loved him at all, she might've lied to his face in his last moment, but in those final harrowing weeks, she'd taken care of him. Demonstrated in unforgettable ways that he had value, was part of what she defended, her world.

It wasn't what this Buffy's Spike had—her heart and body and lovingkindness, evidence of which poured forth as she excitedly explained the situation to Giles and urged him to do something about it pronto—but it was more than he'd ever had in all his undead days. And he knew he'd never have it again, even if he walked out of that alley.

Buffy hung up the phone. "They're on their way. Get out so I can dress."

Something—not relief?—made him want to give her a hard time, now it was all out in the open. "Nothin' I haven't seen before, love. Wouldn't mind getting another peek before you put the goods away."

"I'm not goods. Anyway, I thought you said—"

"Said there's no you-an'-me where I'm from. Didn't say there never was." He waggled a brow at her.

"I can't believe I kissed you and told you all that mush stuff!" she wailed. "How do I even know you're telling the truth? You're probably evil."

"You think so? Stake me, then."

She stepped closer, brandishing the stake, but though there was no hint of humor about her at that moment, he wasn't worried.

Instead of attacking him, she looked straight into his eyes. Searching. Wondering.

"It's only me, pet. You'd know me anywhere, wouldn't you? We've always known each other, yeah?"

"You are so full of shit, William The Bloody. Get out. Out."

 

Cheated of lovemaking, he could at least console himself with a snack. While the blood heated in the microwave, Spike looked out the kitchen window. It was getting dark now. The neat houses across the street were same as they ever were—he'd never paid much attention to them.

The First Evil must not have come to this Sunnydale, or if it did, she'd stopped it a lot quicker and neater than they had. The people here had never packed up their cars and abandoned this town.

The microwave dinged. He took a fresh mug from the cabinet.

"I see you've made yourself right at home."

Buffy sailed into the kitchen, looking very soccer mom in a light long-sleeved turtleneck sweater and sweatpants, her hair pulled into a neat ponytail. The look said: no more nonsense, sexy or otherwise.

"An' why not?"

"But it isn't your home. You said—"

"Knew this place right well. Was in an' out all the time, an' stayed in your basement for weeks before the big battle with The First. But everythin's different," he sniffed. "Just that it all still stands, to start with. Somewhere 'long the way, things diverged big time."

"Diverged how?"

"Well, for one thing, you an' me don't live together in wedded bliss."

She blushed. "We're not actually mar—"

"I haven't even seen you in a year. Less you wanna count spottin' the back of your head in that dive in Rome. Which I don't wanna count."

"Rome?"

"Sunnyhell is gone. All this—" he swooped an arm "is a crater with a heap of rubble at the bottom."

Buffy's eyes widened. She glanced around, as if the house was about to collapse.

"I died at the bottom of that crater. Burned up."

"You look pretty un-burn-y to me."

"Yeah, well, it got better. Didn't want you to know, but it turned out to be less simple than that, on account of an amulet I wore that did a big part of the heavy liftin' during the fight."

"What amulet?"

"That's not important. Important thing was—"

"That you went into it knowing you'd die, and you did it anyway."

"Yeah. 'Spect you find that familiar?"

She nodded, looking solemn.

"Only my quietus wasn't quite yet, so now I'm on round two of my unlife, hooked up with Angel in LA. Leastways—not hooked up hooked up—"

"No?"

He couldn't quite read her expression.

"So how did it diverge?" she said. "You're just like my Spike. You know all of us, this house, the town—"

"You died, we just established that."

"Yeah. That was a while ago now."

"Right, the Glory thing. An' they brought you back, Willow an' the others. That wasn't a pretty year."

"What happened?"

"What happened for you? Want to know how you got into this life with me. Last thing that should ever have happened."

Buffy shrugged, but a little smile played around her lips. "You know. Getting pulled out heaven ... it was bad, I was sad and mad and uh, behaved like a cad, but you were sweet to me, you made things bearable, and after a while we got to be a thing and now we're a thing with our own little kid. Every year we save the world. The family that slays together, et cetera."

You were sweet to me, you made things bearable. That's what he tried to do, only it hadn't worked for them. Because a soulless demon couldn't really be kind; he could love, but his love would always lack the power to heal. He was sure of that. "Family. Whose kid is she?"

"Ours. Yours and mine."

"I mean who got her on you?"

"She's ours."

"How the buggerin' hell did I give you a kid?"

Now she hesitated, blinked. "Time travel was involved. It was another thing."

"Time travel. When was this?"

"Is that a trick question? Nine months before Jemmie was born."

"No, I mean ... after Willow brought you back from the dead."

"Not long. I came back, I was miserable, we ... took up with each other."

"Was there singing?"

"Just for that one day."

"Right. I remember that." Thought he preferred not to.

"Okay. And then a few days after the singing, you and I ... got together."

"Brought the house down." He knew his grin was lewd, but that was a memory he never got tired of, even with all that happened later overlaid on it.

"We did." Her smile too, contained layers of association.

"And then Giles left, an' you had no money, you got that McJob, an' we had our escalatin' series of squalid assignations which you—"

"Giles didn't stay away long. What McJob?"

"Dunno how you could forget the bloody Doublemeat Palace, love."

"You're saying I worked there? I've never even set foot into—oh. I think this might be where our notes stop comparing."

"Guess so."

"And the squalid assignations? What does that mean?"

"If it doesn't mean anything to you, pet, I'd as soon keep it that way. What about the trio?"

"Huh?"

"The nerds."

"Nerds. What, Warren, Jonathan, and—I can never remember that other kid's name. Them? They were a pain in my ass. But they all left town a while ago now."

"They were after takin' over. The spring after you were brought back, they murdered a girl, made you think you'd done it, an' when I tried to stop you martyrin' yourself for it, you beat my face to a bloody pulp. An' later that Warren shit put a bullet in you an' killed Tara."

"Killed?"

"Yeah, yeah, an' that made Willow go off the deep end, Full Metal Magic, an' she came this close to ending the world."

"This close? How close?"

"Dunno exactly. After what went down between you an' me in this house, I left town. When I got back, was crazier than a shithouse rat on account of gettin' my soul, and then—"

"Whoa whoa whoa! Soul?"

She'd grabbed his arm. Her eyes were the size of cake plates.

"You must know—"

"I don't. I don't know. What are you talking about?"

"What're you talking about? Don't tell me he doesn't—? You'd never live with him, love him, without his having—"

"Of course he doesn't have a soul. How could he?"

 

 

They were equally blindsided. She still gripped his arm, and it was like 50,000 volts arced between them.

Of all that was astonishing and incredible here, this was the apex. It had never occurred to Spike that the one whose reality this was hadn't also returned successful from a harrowing soul quest.

Because how could she be Buffy, and accept him as he used to be? It made no sense.

Since she'd returned to the house, he'd relaxed into believing that all this really was what it seemed. But now his suspicion came piling back. The Buffy he knew wouldn't love a soulless demon whose only restraint was a chip in his head. In what way was she the ever-righteous slayer he adored if she could do that?

Before either of them could speak, Giles walked in the kitchen door. Buffy yanked her hand back, and spun around, gesturing big and loud.

"Giles! I'm so glad to see you! I hope you've got an assortment of solutions to this problem in that bag of yours."

The bag, which he swung up onto the counter island, was a leather knapsack bulging with books.

"Perhaps. I've been on to the Devon witches, who were already aware of an anomaly in space-time occurring at the hour that—" He focused now on Spike, did a double-take, and seemed unsure how to go on. "That Spike here—if he is Spike—claims to have come on the scene."

"Not claimin'. Telling the truth."

"We'll proceed on that assumption, yes."

Seeing Giles again—even this other version—reminded Spike of how much he didn't like the man. Instinctually didn't want to trust him. Though it was a mistake to trust anything here—pseudo!Buffy was right, he'd been thinking with his dick far too long, wasting time.

Now it was dark out, maybe he should get out of this house, and go find solutions on his own. Maybe the right place to go was Los Angeles. Seek out Angel and his people. He was supposed to be with them anyway.

Giles' cell phone rang. Buffy took advantage of this diversion to pluck at his sleeve. He followed her into the living room.

"About the ... is it really true?"

"Sure it's true. Vampire wouldn't joke about a thing like that."

She squinted at him like she could see it if she focused hard enough. "How did you get a soul, anyway? I thought Angel was supposed to be the only one, and his is a curse on him. I thought that was the way it worked."

"There's nothin' in this world or any on 'em that only works one way, Slayer. There's places in Africa, ancient places, where you can get what you're willin' to fight for."

"But why? What made you want ..."

He could see that the whole concept of Spike-with-a-soul made her writhe with discomfort. Was it because her old beau Angel was supposed to be sole proprietor? Or did it make her feel dirty, that she'd put herself in the hands of a Spike without one? That made sense—it made his Buffy feel plenty dirty enough.

Well, he wouldn't spare her. "Tried to rape you. Right here in this house."

She flinched at the word rape, but the revulsion he expected to see wasn't there; she looked more confused than anything.

"What?"

"... just ... that's so out of character for you."

This response was mind-reeling. Who was this woman? "S'not like you to pretend you don't know what I am."

"I know. Spike, I know. What you were. Before. I also know what you're like with me. Since you started to love me, you've never come remotely close—"

There was something in this, and the way she said it, and how her eyes shone, that mortified him. He didn't want to look at her; her confidence in him felt like an abomination. "Yeah, well, guess this is what separates the real Spike from the milquetoast knock-off you've got in your bed. Big Bad, here! Mad bad an' dangerous to know. Every bit of it. Out of control. Needed to be fixed. No other way."

She put a hand to her mouth. Was she laughing at him? "I didn't mean to embarrass you."

He couldn't think of anything to say. The clock on the desk was very interesting. He studied its face.

When she spoke again, there was no hint of laughter in her voice. "I don't know what the circumstances were, for you and her. But it's funny—not funny ha-ha, though—because I assaulted you too. Not a beating, like you said the other me did," she winced, "I—I raped you. After they brought me back, while I was sort of crazy. I hurt you badly, and humiliated you—repeatedly—and ... and you forgave me."

His mind's eye snapped back to that trunkful of toys upstairs—the well-used strap-on he'd seen there—was she talking about that? Wielding the cock for a bit of rough sex? She couldn't really mean rape? It wasn't like her, he couldn't imagine her trying on him what he'd done to her upstairs .... He flashed back on the night she'd pulped his face. She had that kind of violence in her, sure, but the other?

No. Wasn't the same. Besides, one way or another he'd deserved every blow she ever gave him.

"Spike—" Her touch on his arm was soft, polite. "Did I forgive you? When you came back with your soul? For what you ... what you say you didn't actually do? I must've done, if you stayed, if you—"

"Hey! So, what's going on here?" Xander came through the front-door, almost bouncing, looking peeved.

Again Buffy sprang apart from him. This time, she met his eye, her back to Xander, and mouthed something. Don't tell. About the soul.

 

Spike smiled. "So, did you ask her yet?"

Buffy said, "What?"

Xander's peeve darkened. He grabbed for Spike's shirt-front; Buffy stepped between them. "Stop it! What are you doing?"

"This—fake—got me to tell him all my—"

"Got you? Didn't get you to do anythin'—!"

"Why didn't you say you're not Spike?"

"You wouldn't shut up long enough, would you? Anyway, I am Spike."

The next thing Spike knew, he was flat on the floor, his cheekbone ground into the rug. "Hey! You try it on with him, you deal with me."

"You should just say yes, love. S'clear enough how you feel about him."

Faith's eyes blazed up; she punched him.

Buffy tugged Faith away; Spike sat up and pretended to dust himself off. "Feelin' more like home here every minute."

Giles' voice called them to order. "Spike, the ladies of the coven want to know what you recall about the dimensional shift. Did a portal open?"

"Why're we dealin' with long distance? Where's Willow? Thought she'd be all over this like white on rice."

"Willow ... is away." Giles held out his cell phone; after a hesitation, Spike took it.

While he described the battle against the Circle of the Black Thorn to the calm English woman on the other end, he watched them all listening—Buffy in particular. She grew more and more tense as the details unfolded. When he got to Illyria, her mouth dropped open. "Think maybe she did it. Was part of the god's power, yeah, freezin' time, manipulatin' it, movin' in and out of dimensions. Angel's people powered her down some, but she could still do plenty. Only maybe not control it so well as she could before."

He answered a few questions, then handed the phone back. Faith and Xander were still watching him like he was going to swipe the silver. It was sort of hilarious, that they were suspicious of him, souled Spike, who was—though they didn't know it—safe as houses. And were good friends instead with a Spike who was less highly evolved. He still didn't get it—they seemed like the same people he knew, the ones who'd always held him at arm's length. So, why?

Giles ended the call. "They're working on pinpointing the right location, and then they'll open a portal. It may take a little while."

"So meanwhile, what? Gonna sling me in irons?"

Giles, Faith and Xander looked like maybe they thought this was a concept, but Buffy waved it away. "Of course not. We'll just ... we'll just wait." She glanced at the others. "You guys don't have to stay. Spike can hang out here."

"I'd rather like to chat with Spike during the remaining time," Giles said. "His story of the battle he was engaged in may end up being instructive. And—"

"Y'know," Buffy said, getting firmly to her feet, "I can ask him about that, and take notes. Copious notes. So why don't you guys head out, and do whatever you were gonna do this evening, and when we know when our portal is scheduled for, we can reconvene. Yes?"

What was she so anxious to get rid of them for? Still, come to think of it, he wasn't overeager to be quizzed by Giles, or to go on suffering the gazes of the other two, so he kept schtum.

Xander glanced at Faith. "Well ... we could still head out to that—"

She dropped her eyes. Was it Spike's imagination, or did she blush? "Yeahallrightlet'sgo."

"But Buffy, this is a very unusual opportunity to—"

"Giles. Don't you think Anya and Jemmie are wondering?"

"Really Buffy, I'm sure they're having a fine time on their own, and—"

She crowded him towards the door, and onto the porch. "We'll see you later. Thanks, Giles."

When she came back inside, Spike didn't move from where he was slumped loungily in a chair.

"That wasn't what I expected."

She looked grim. "I want to talk to you, and I didn't think you'd want them to listen."

"True. Not sure I want you to listen either."

"I am getting this vibe off you ... what is it? You don't respect me because I love you without a soul?"

He was surprised to hear her say it; he didn't think she was that intuitive, and certainly she had no reason to be particularly tuned in to him.

"I don't know what the differences are that made things turn out so badly for you. Why your Buffy wouldn't ...."

"I bloody well know. Didn't have so much to do with what went on between her an' me. I was chipped up, an' I fell for her, and I tried to do like she'd want me to do, but I didn't really feel it, because I was a demon. Loved her, loved the sweet bit, but that didn't change what I'd done, what I was. She never could care for me—for that. An' when it came down to it, couldn't overcome my nature, an' savaged her."

She sank into a chair opposite. "How was she treating you, leading up to this savaging?"

"Not important."

Buffy's eyes closed; her face took on a look of patient disdain, he wasn't sure who for. "Oh," she murmured, "it's important. Takes two to tango, remember?"

"You're talking nonsense. I—"

"What, you think things here haven't been rough? We're talkin' rough. I'm a slayer. You're a vampire. It's not like we're regular people. It took me a long time to get that—you know me, I always wanted to be Miss Normal Girl. I'm mostly over that now ... You should see what goes on in this house, what's normal for us. A lot of it wouldn't be right for other people."

Spike shrugged. He didn't like hearing this.

Buffy sat forward, arms crossed on her knees. "Okay ... but after this attempted rape ... you were, what? Disgusted with yourself? And you decided you needed a soul."

"Yeah."

"You decided. She didn't tell you to get one?"

"She told me to get the fuck out, that's all."

"So you decided, and you went on a very long journey, and you fought for it. I wonder why a demon would do that, if all he was was evil to his core."

Spike had no good answer to this. Whatever conscience he might've developed under the Scoobies' influence clearly hadn't been enough, which was why he needed a soul in the first place if he wasn't going to just go immolate himself and be done.

Buffy sighed. "Look, I know what Spike is. I know that the good he does now can't really balance out his past. But I know there's more to him than just pretending to be good so he can get in my pants, even if that's what started him on a new road. He loves us, so passionately—it outweighs his other impulses. It rules him. And I learned to respect that. To be ... a little awed at how love runs him, to be a little envious, even. Anyway, he was there for me when I needed him, he didn't try to make me act happy like my other friends did. He has something I need. He satisfies me. We satisfy each other. I stopped feeling ashamed of that a long time ago."

This speech of hers rocked him; his Buffy had seldom been so articulate, and of course she'd never said anything remotely like this to him. She was ashamed of her desire, ashamed of its consummation, and she'd never let herself get anywhere close to admitting that she cared about him—at least, not before he got the soul. And afterwards—well, she took care of him, all right, over and over. He'd always be grateful for that. But she held everyone off that last year. The more people piled into her house, the more on her own Buffy became. He'd known by then that they were never going to have a shot at anything. It wasn't what she wanted. He had to just accept that. He'd had his bit of happiness, his all-that-might've-been, that one night she let him hold her, in the stranger's house.

Hearing this Buffy say she wasn't ashamed—that almost wiped his small triumphs away. He couldn't look at her, her bright earnest face. Instead he scooped up a toy from the floor near his chair; a pink plastic puppy that squeaked when he squeezed it.

"If there's so much goin' on here that's not for normal people, what about the kiddie?"

"Jemmie's fine. She's got to be the most adored child in the whole state of California. She's got a huge entourage of worshippers. You head it up."

Turning the silly toy in his hand, he couldn't bring himself to believe it. Children were once a preferred snack, and since the soul he wanted nothing to do with them.

"You named her Jemima."

"Your favorite sister, of course."

"Where'd you get those photos I saw upstairs?"

"They're yours. Aren't they?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. They must be, only ... I have trouble remembering." He still didn't want to think about it—his mind shied from the whole subject, as if he was under some kind of spell that made it obscurely painful to look straight at what lingered in the corners of his consciousness.

Buffy made a face. Then she was on her feet, and standing in front of him, her hand resting lightly on his shoulder.

"Spike."

"Yeah." He still didn't want to look at her, didn't want to be this close to her. Fucking hell, he could still go. Plenty of time to get to LA before daybreak.

"I'm so worried about my Spike, but I'm worried about you too. That seeing this is making you unhappy. It must be so hard."

He shot up, moved away from her.

"And it makes me sad that there's another Buffy who doesn't have you in her life. Who's alone. I can't imagine not being with Spike."

"Who said she's alone?"

"Isn't she?"

"... I don't know."

"It feels wrong, that you're far away from each other. That you're fighting this huge army and she isn't there."

"Think I like the unsentimental you better."

"I'm not being sentimental! Huh. The other Buffy must be kind of a bitch. I mean—I'm kind of a bitch, but she's got to be—"

"Shut up! You don't know her! She always did what was right." This time he made it to the door, but couldn't resist glancing back.

She regarded him through narrowed eyes. "Uh. Huh. Well ... would you tell me the rest of what happened? You got a soul, you came back here, and eventually you died—supposedly—in a battle. But in between?"

In between. Crazy. Then controlled by The First. That was when Buffy rose to it, though, wasn't it? He was for a swift staking, but no, she wanted to find out what was going on. She no longer suspected him of every nefarious thing.

Suddenly it seemed important to explain all that to this Buffy, who, it seemed to him, was passing a lot of bloody offensive judgments on him and the woman he loved, based on insufficient information. He had to make her understand that her counterpart had done her absolute best, and that she wasn't to blame for not fulfilling his dodgy romantic fantasies. Reeling back to the sofa, he sat and told her. Everything he could remember.

Except the very end. What Buffy said at the very end. He wasn't going to tell this one, who scribbled mushy notes and wore frothy lingerie just for Spike, how his Buffy had lied. He preferred to leave that out of the whole equation. After all, it was just her trying again to do what she saw as the right thing.

"So she just left you down there to burn."

"Had to. The amulet's magic wouldn't have worked if I'd tried to bolt. Anyway, I was ready to go."

"And you never let her know you were still around? Do you really think that's fair?"

"It's the best thing I've ever done for her."

A dry look; a little stunned, contemplative, was the only answer to this. Buffy sat with her hands on her knees, and seemed to be holding her breath.

Then she leapt up, muttered something through her hand to her mouth, and rushed out of the room.

It took Spike a second to realize what she'd said. I'm so lucky—I never knew how much!

 

This was getting on his last nerve. When fifteen minutes elapsed and she didn't return, Spike rose and went to see what she was doing. Following her scent upstairs, he realized she was in the bathroom, whose door stood ajar. He couldn't bring himself to approach. From the top of the stairs, he said, "Slayer? You all right?"

She didn't answer. He listened to her heartbeat, but he couldn't tell much from that. After another minute elapsed, he crept closer to the door.

She was standing at the sink, staring at herself in the mirror.

Afterwards he'd never been able to approach this bathroom without his mind reverting to what he'd done there. Even when he was living in the house, taking showers, the place never settled down into being just the smallest room, it was always a stage for disaster, the place where his last illusion about himself was shattered.

He made to withdraw, but she glanced around. "Spike."

Her eyes were red. She'd washed her face, but he could smell her tears.

"Don't fret yourself, Slayer. It'll all come right, an' you'll have your precious pet vamp back again, safe an' sound. Little while now."

"Don't call him that! God, is that really what you think of us? Look, you don't know him either! Why are you so hard on us?"

"Just callin' it like I see it, pet. How I've always done."

She made a face. "It's really you you're being so hard on. You have a soul now, that's supposed to make you into a person, like all the rest of us persons." She turned and leaned against the sink, to face him standing in the doorway. "You must know there was a lot more ambiguity in your make-up before you got it than you're admitting now. Don't be a puritan, it's boring. And that isn't why I was crying."

Spike took one step into the torture chamber. He wasn't afraid that he'd do anything terrible here again, but his whole self bridled against the reminder of how desperate for her he'd once been. He could so easily be that again—on fire for the unattainable woman. And if he somehow survived all this, he didn't want to suffer like that again. Yeah, it was almost like being alive, loving and desiring so desperately—but he'd made up his mind in LA that he wasn't going to get into personalities again. Pole dancers, Nintendo and the Big Eternal Verities of Good And Evil would do for him from now on. Safer that way.

Gentler on the frayed self.

"So why were you cryin'?" He wasn't sure he wanted to know, but she seemed to expect he'd ask. Standing on the tiles, he felt again what it was like to seize her, to paw at her clothes, to wrestle her down to the floor. And at the same time, how it was earlier when she'd kissed him, and he'd caressed her arms, his hands passing up and down the smooth skin, feeling the tautness of her muscle underneath, the warmth and pulse of her, and how she'd smiled and quivered at his touch. How rare and ecstatic it was for those few moments to just be allowed to caress her, to be gentle with her, to suss out what she really felt like. All their bashing and crashing encounters years back had left him still feeling he hadn't had that chance.

"I was thinking. Maybe how it happened to you is better. You have a soul, the hellmouth is closed, there are all those new slayers, so the whole weight of it isn't just on me and Faith. Maybe that's how it's really supposed to be. Maybe it's me who took the wrong path, and not the other Buffy. I wanted ... I didn't want to be unhappy. I didn't want to be all alone. That was selfish."

"S'not ... not selfish. You said yourself, you still save the world."

"But ...."

"World I'm from isn't any better than this, I can tell you. Sunnydale hellmouth's closed, yeah, but things're ugly all over. Don't suppose ... either way's better. S'just what is, yeah?" His head was starting to ache. A little while ago he'd been stiff with righteousness, but that was all collapsed now; her sadness and confusion was infusing him too. He shook his head.

Buffy was staring now at ... he wasn't sure what, her eyes seemed pointed at his knees, but it was a thousand yard stare. "What is. What is. Except I just don't know ... how I would still be alive if not for Spike." She raised her head, and her eyes were reddening again. "I really don't think I'd have made it. How did she? How did she do it all by herself?"

"Wasn't all by herself, had all the Scoobies 'round her. Sure you're no less accomplished than she is. Sure you're ...."

"You think there's something wrong with me because I learned to love you just as you were, and I—I can't imagine how she could've walked away from what you give me! I. Just. Can't."

Her noble little face bore that look now that Spike associated with Buffy's confrontations with the abyss; those moments when she didn't think she was ever going to pull it out. It was an expression he'd seen all too often; it used to fill him with tenderness for her, and a kind of helpless admiration for how hard she had to work, and to be.

She tipped up her chin, brought her gaze to his.

Suddenly she was right beside him, her hand on his forearm. "Oh Spike. Oh, don't. I'm sorry."

It took a moment to catch up to her, because he hadn't realized what he was doing. Her little hand was on his face; she swept a thumb across his cheek, crushing the tear, leaving a streak of wet. He hated crying in front of her, but couldn't make himself stop; the compassion in her eyes made his throat go into a painful knot he couldn't swallow around. For a moment she just stood close to him, stroking his arm. Then she put her body right up against his, and her arms around his neck, and again he was taken by surprise when her mouth brushed his.

"What—no—" He jerked back, stumbled over the door sill, retreating into the hall.

She followed, her movements soft, ghosting towards him, taking hold not of his flesh but of a belt loop, arresting him. Invading his space but so gently he didn't know how to repel her. Again she went on tiptoe, breathed against his mouth, touched her lips to his.

"What're you doin', Slayer? Think I ought to have a pity fuck, that it?"

This froze her, but only for a moment. She shook her head gently, and her voice was gentle too, reassuring. Persuasive. "I think we should make love in my bed. She should've given you that, treated you right. So let me."

"You're not her, an' you don't know—"

"I do know. I told you, things between us here weren't always sweetness and light ... they're still not. I'm Buffy. I'm just as much Buffy as she is. And you're just as much Spike." She was drifting in some imperceptible way backwards, towards her room, drawing him along with her. "I'm going to show you what you are to me, here in my house, in Sunnydale. There's no house, no Sunnydale, where you're going back to, so now's the time."

He wasn't sure this made a whole lot of sense, but he also wasn't quite ready to dig in his heels and have an existential argument with her. Even in sweatpants and long-sleeves and her most mom-ish ponytail, she got to him like no other woman ever had.

At the doorway, she slipped free, and stepping back, began to undress. Under the baggy covers, she was still wearing the seafoam lingerie, the sight of which reminded him that he wasn't supposed to be the recipient of this anniversary gift. He was here in someone else's place.

"Not exactly sure what point you're tryin' to prove here, love."

She stopped, her hands on the ties at her waist. "I'm not trying to prove anything. I feel—"

"—Sorry for me, got it, yeah."

"No! I mean ... not entirely ... not the way you mean."

"It'll be all right, Slayer. They'll get it sorted, an' he'll come back to you."

"I know." The last of that wild stare dropped away. "But while we're together, let's make something of it." She held out a hand to him, as if she was going to draw him into a dance.

He hesitated, then clasped it in his. Her words, her look, the fierceness of her grip, moved him. She held tight, as if he might be sucked away at any moment.

"You really think your Spike would want me to have you like this?"

She actually took a moment to think about it. "You know, if he were here, and heard all we'd said to each other, I think he'd insist on it."

"If he were here, I wouldn't be."

"Well, there ya go. I think that clinches it."

"You're talkin' nonsense, Slayer."

She let the sweatpants drop to the floor and stepped out of them. "You're talking too much, Spike."

 

This time, taking her in his arms, he was even more self-conscious than when he'd been deceiving her a few hours ago. Their first kisses were mis-timed; she breathed raggedly against his mouth, her body tense, pulse fluttering. He wondered if she'd changed her mind; maybe he should say something, or just withdraw. But then she tightened her embrace, and whispered into his collarbone: "I think I'm too excited to do this right."

"Are you, pet? An' what's right anyway?"

"I want this to be perfect for you."

"I don't."

"Huh?"

He steered her slowly towards the bed. "I just want Buffy. Just be Buffy."

"Oh God. How could—"

"Sssh." He smoothed her clenched brow with a fingertip. "Don't worry 'bout that anymore, don't worry 'bout her. She's a good girl an' so are you, an' there's no need to compare." He was so turned on himself now that he'd lost all compunction about stripping off, and wasn't terribly interested in chatting anymore either. True, she wasn't the right Buffy, the real and original one. His. But this Buffy was in love with him. She exuded it with every breath; she smelled like it. She would let him take his time, let him look into her eyes. She'd be strong and forceful like she was, but she wouldn't hurt him.

Not physically, anyway. He knew, even as his brain buzzed with wanting her, that in the end this was going to hurt.

She'd unbuttoned his fly and drawn him out; her warm hand circled his cock; she pressed it against her belly.

Spike shuddered and came.

"Shit—!"

She was only startled for a moment, then she laughed, a girly little laugh, nothing mocking in it. "I feel better now, that you were really excited too." She wiped herself off with a tissue. "Anyway, I know you—all that did was take the edge off. C'mere. Kiss me some more."

 

 

In bed, she was as he remembered her. Strong, firm in commanding the lead and setting the pace, not shy about taking or being seen in any position. But beyond that basic familiarity, the experience of fucking this Buffy was brand new. When he used to have her, he always told himself that, whatever she thought she was doing, he was making love.

Now, they were making love to each other. This glimpse into the existence—the everyday, normal existence—of his counterpart, was heartbreaking, maddening. Why had this Buffy's scorn turned to affection and acceptance? There's many a slip, twixt the cup and the lip. This phrase floated up out of the mists at the back of his mind, even as Buffy's mouth ground against his. Who used to say that to him? The "voice" of it felt masculine. His father? He tried to picture him, but came up blank, except for the image he'd seen a little while ago on the wall, the daguerrotype he didn't exactly remember but recognized as belonging to his former self. It was all very strange and he didn't want to be thinking about it. Not while Buffy rained down on him her warm and lusty regard.

She'd been right, at any rate, about his premature gush taking the edge off. He was hard again a few minutes later, and in the meantime, could concentrate on making her writhe and flush and gasp, just with his mouth on hers, and his trailing fingers. She was so responsive to his touch, and unlike the Buffy he knew, not at all defensive. Her randiness was not of the sex-starved variety but of the kind that battened on being constantly satisfied—she needed, and got, a great deal of daily seeing-to, that was obvious, it made her sleek and loose and confident. And it wasn't just that she was seen to—it was him. Or the other Spike, at least. Her desire for him—her knowledge of his body—was raw and specific, and yeah, flattering as fuck—she made him feel like a god.

She knew how to go down on him just the way he liked—clearly she'd made a study of it. His Buffy had done so only rarely, with a bad grace and not very well—the main excitement of it was always that his cock was in her mouth at all. Sprawled across him now back to front, she sucked him off like she was starving, giving him a view, meanwhile, between her wide-spread thighs, of her glistening quim, and her rosy little bunghole, both of which responded to his fingering with wiggles and avid nips. When he came, Buffy swallowed and sighed, resting her head for a moment on his thigh, before pushing herself back so her cunny was against his mouth.

"Oh God. Ohhhh—!"

Seizing her hips, he dragged her in closer, stabbing into her with his tongue between taking long licks at her clit. After a moment he tumbled her over onto her back, so he could get at her better.

"Most delicious pussy I ever met," he said, when she'd spent and spent again and pushed him back. "He tell you that?"

"You tell me every time. Sometimes you mention it when we're not in bed too—you'll whisper it in my ear while we're checking out at the supermarket, or waiting to get into the movies. And then I get so wet—"

This would, Spike thought, be a nice time, a nice way, to die. Right here, just like this. Maybe he could get her to stake him—not just yet, because they hadn't fucked yet, and he meant to fuck her a time or four—but after. A bit of afterglow, some cuddling, and then phwoom.

What a way to go out.

Only problem was that his dying here might well mean hers would die too, wherever he was, and he didn't want to put her through that. Not when she was being so good to him.

"You get so wet, an' then what happens?"

She smiled. "And then we go somewhere we can fuck. I can't tell you how many movies I haven't seen, or how many times I've paid for ice cream that melts before I can get it home."

"Poor girl."

Buffy's glad face grew shaded. "This must be just so unreal for you. Maybe ... maybe we shouldn't be doing this."

"Wouldn't trade this for—" What was he trading it for? In the alley, right before he did the disappearing trick, he wasn't sure if he was killing the dragon or the dragon was killing him. Probably both. However it went down, he had no expectation that he or any of them would stroll out of that alley at the end of the night. Either they'd be trampled utterly, or they'd fight the thing back at the expense of all their lives. Either way, The End.

This, whatever it was—interlude—was just a way station.

"Come give us a kiss, pet." A moment ago he'd been eager to get his leg over, but now he gathered her close against him, tasting her mouth, drawing a hand through her hair, wanting, more than pleasure and release, to experience her. Buffy seemed to understand this, she slowed too, giving herself to kissing with a charming concentration.

When they broke for her to breath, she murmured, "You're really good at this." Pressing a finger to his lips, slipping it into his mouth. "Y'know, after that first time I kissed you—back when I was in college, remember, and Willow did that spell—even though I was all yuck about it afterwards, I used to think of you."

"Did you pet?"

"I was sorry we didn't get a chance to fuck. I mean, if we had, I'd have staked you after the spell was undone, but ...."

She dotted kisses on his face, on the points of his cheekbones, the scar on his brow. "When we did get together finally, it wasn't that the sex was so amazing that surprised me. What surprised me—"

"Yeah?"

"—was how patient you were with me. How kind you were. Everyone else was sort of hysterically needing me to be normal and happy because I was back from the dead, but you saw through all that, you just let me feel what I felt, and you didn't let me chase you away, even when I brutalized you. I don't know—I still don't know—what makes you that way. You were one of the worst vamps I ever went up against, and then ... you became my best friend." She shuddered in his arms; Spike was suddenly aware of how cool his skin was against hers, how still his body alongside her throbbing.

"I wish I knew why the other Buffy was different."

Clearly this was preying on her as much as all the strangeness of this domestic life preyed on him.

"Everything was harder for her. Giles left an' didn't come back—not for a long time, and not for good. She was left with a load of debt an' no good way to earn money. Was all a huge muddle, an' then the trio began nipping at her heels, making things difficult, 'til they went an' killed a girl, and then the whole bloody thing went pear-shaped, like I told you. Havin' me around makin' demands on her didn't help."

"But—after that night in the house, when it fell down all around us—what happened then?"

"Kept tellin' me she wouldn't see me anymore, threatening me if I told anyone, an' yet she went on coming to my crypt. She ... kept me as a guilty secret, an' the more we met on the down-low, the more she hated it. Never would admit to feelin' anything for me, 'cept lust an' contempt."

"Didn't you get burned out of your crypt?"

"Huh?"

"A little while after we started—the others figured it out, Will and Xander and Anya. They burned you out. They thought they'd run you out of town that way, but instead I brought you to live here, and you've lived here ever since."

"Well there you go. My Buffy never let me be part of her real life—an' her friends never figured out what we were up to 'til much later, an' then it was so ugly I don't want to talk about it anymore."

"I'm sorry. Even after you got your soul, she never—?"

Spike blotted out the sight of her pity-knit face by kissing her again; easing her back. Her moist hand closed around his cock, guided it to her quim. At first she held it so the head just rubbed into the wet folds; moved it against her clit until she shivered and gasped. Then let go and lifted her hips to engulf him.

But once he was firmly seated in her, she relaxed, let him do what he liked. He could feel her waiting for his lead, matching her movements to his, and knowing her, how she always was, this affected him almost more than anything yet. How much she wanted to demonstrate herself, to please.

"Wrap your pretty legs round me, pet."

She did, and her arms, she made herself warm and soft, all curves and slick skin, the force and muscle in abeyance for a little while.

She wasn't his. But he was glad for the lending of her, this little while.

He'd come already so many times that he was able now to go slow.

She thrummed around him, simmering. Kept saying Yes. Over and over, whispering it and gasping it. Yes. Spike, yes.

The phone rang.

They froze.

Two rings. Three.

"That'll be Giles. Better pick it up." Though it felt like plunging naked into an ice floe, Spike withdrew, rolled off her. Grabbed the phone from the bedstand and handed it over.

He could see her trying to get a grip on herself before hitting the button. Her face was all flushed, her nipples tall and tight and hard.

"Hello? Any news?"

She listened; Spike could hear too. Giles was describing something entirely too technical for Buffy's attention span—especially now—about portals and interdimensional disturbances. When he mentioned that the coven on the case had detected the energy signature of her Spike on the other side, tears sprang to her eyes.

Then the call was over. They had an hour before Giles and the others would arrive, equipped by the power of the far-off coven to open a new portal and put him back where he belonged.

An hour!

She was crying now, and he could see how firmly she'd been suppressing her own fear and anxiety while dealing with him.

"It'll be all right, pet. He'll be fine. S'meant for me to go out in that battle, not him. Not his fight. He'll come back here safe an' sound."

Gulping, she nodded. "But I want to help you. Why isn't she helping you? What can we do?"

"From here, nothing. Just ..." He reached for her, and she pulled him to her again, as if agreeing that the best thing to do was finish what they'd begun in this bed.

Now that she was worked up, her more primal emotion released, she was different again—she fucked him back hard, grinding herself against him, her hands gripping hard enough to bruise, exacting sucking kisses. She mewed like a tiger cat as he drove into her.

At the end he lost himself for a few moments, was surprised to come to on his back, feeling like he'd plunged through space. Just as when he'd first arrived in this place.

But she was there. Wet and smeared and tousled and smelling like her most intense self.

There were so many things he wanted to ask her and tell her still, but now their time was up.

"That was lovely, pet." Understatement of the bloody century.

"I hope it was."

"Nothing better."

They kissed again, but it was definitely a finishing sort of kiss.

"Better have a shower an' brush up. Don't want to shock Rupert."

She seemed to want to hold him there, but after a moment's resistance, nodded and slid to the edge of the bed.

She went out into the hall, to the "bad" bathroom, and left him the one inside the master bedroom, with which he had no associations.

They met again in the kitchen. She was microwaving blood.

"At least I can feed you up before you go back to—"

"Appreciate it."

They were awkward again. The ten minutes 'til Giles was due to arrive felt like a desert of time to fill.

"I think ..." Buffy began, and stopped.

"What?"

The microwave dinged. She was very housewifely about taking out the blood, pouring it into a mug.

"What?" Spike prompted.

"I just ... I think you should have hope. You don't know you can't win the battle. I mean, you, and Angel, together, you should be able to—"

Hearing her say this, feeling the heat of her blush, Spike realized he had no hope, and didn't want any. Didn't want to look forward. There was nothing to look forward to. "Concentrate on gettin' your man back an' put all this behind you."

"But—"

Before she could go on, Giles arrived, with the others. They moved en masse down to the basement, which was fitted out as a training area, nothing like Spike last remembered it. There was plenty of room to make the magical circle. Xander and Faith got going on that while Giles, communicating by phone with the coven, took last minute instructions. Oddly, since Spike was the whole focus of the ritual, they all seemed to be ignoring him.

Buffy proposed going through the portal as well. "I want in on this battle."

Giles made a decided negative. "If you go, the Buffy who belongs there will end up here."

"So? She's not doing them any good herself! She's in Rome, shopping!"

"Buffy ... I can't guarantee that I can pull you back if you do that. For Jemima's sake—"

"But—if I go—and she ends up here—then you can shove her through into the battle right away, and then she can do her duty, and I—"

"My dear, I don't think we can count on it working like that. The portal will almost certainly collapse as soon as Spike passes through it."

"Are you sure?"

Buffy turned to him. "What about you—don't you think—?"

"No." He didn't want Buffy going through, and he didn't want his Buffy anywhere near the battle either. He liked knowing she was off on the other side of the world, having a life for herself. She'd more than earned it, and that was that.

She frowned, watching him; something in his demeanor seemed to convince her to let the matter drop.

Instead she crossed her arms, eyeing him critically. "Okay, so I'm not going to be able to help. But I know you're going to fight well. You always do."

"Do I? Well then, 'spect that'll be so."

"I am not seeing you off to your death here. This is you getting back to your life. Spike—please think of it that way."

"Buffy, don't—"

"Why? Why not? Why give up when—"

Suddenly he found himself blurting what he'd wanted to keep hidden from this Buffy, the sweet affectionate one.

"She told me, when we were down the hellmouth an' I was startin' to burn. She told me then that she loved me."

Buffy started; her face opened up, from surprise into a dazzling smile that collapsed all at once, the way the hellmouth had collapsed on him at the moment of his death. Her mouth worked—for a moment she couldn't manage to speak. Her eyes were glassy and her voice broke. "You ... oh no. You didn't believe her."

Spike couldn't bring himself to look into this Buffy's eyes as he shrugged. "Was the only time she ever lied to me. Was sorry she did, at the last. Bit of a cheat, after everythin'."

"But—Spike—"

At that moment Giles stepped towards him. "Right. We're ready now. You need to participate in the ritual, so that the portal will open to the right place."

"I'm there." He followed Giles to the circle without looking again at Buffy. There was some business to go through in Ancient Assyrian and burnt herbs. For a moment afterwards, as they stared at the circle's center, it seemed like nothing at all was going to happen. Spike glanced at them all: Buffy, Giles, Xander, Faith. Noticed that Faith was wearing the ring Xander had shown him before.

He was about to say something about it, when a blinding flash scorched his skin, and suddenly the space of the basement was exponentially vast and open and boiling with darkness; energy crackled at the edges of something that had no real shape, and on the other side of it he could hear, before he could see, the rain and the stamp and clang of battle. The stink of it came next, torn demon flesh, the free-flowing blood of many creatures, and garbage left out to rot, soaked in the downpour. And then all at once, he—all of them—saw it. The dragon, filling the portal's whole proscenium, its great wings thrashing, bouncing up and down in the murk as it struggled to dislodge something from its back.

As it banked, stalling in air, he saw—himself. Game-faced, covered in blood, yelling like a banshee, planted on the dragon's back and sawing at its coiling writhing neck with a sword.

At his side, Xander's awed voice broke the Sunnydale silence. "Why's Spike naked?"

"I was naked when I got here," Spike said, only now realizing, with a dropping feeling in the pit of his stomach, what that meant.

"Nothing inorganic can move through the portal," Giles confirmed. "Bodies go, clothes don't." He, like the others, was gawking at the sight; the dragon might almost have been in the basement with them, its roar seemed to shake the house.

Spike stared. So that was what he looked like, in full-on fists and fangs! His counterpart was definitely having a moment of joyous glory—the sight of it rooted him to the spot, purpose momentarily absorbed into awed observation.

Then Buffy broke from his side, making a dash towards the portal.

"NO!" Spike sprang forward, grabbed her just as her hand crackled into the opening, snatched her back. "What the hell are you doin'?"

He had her by the arms, shook her a little to put the sense back into her. But she was alight with passion, struggled out of his grip. " I know she wasn't lying! I've never lied to you!"

He wanted to tell her that she didn't understand and that it wasn't any of her business anyway, but at that moment the other Spike took a blow from the dragon's tail to his back that sent him arse over teakettle; he was dangling now, fresh blood streaming from the new wound, having lost hold of the sword, which was still buried deep in the dragon's scaly twining neck, and struggling to cling to the base of one wing even as the dragon spat fire towards his bare kicking legs.

"Fucking hell—" Dropping Buffy, Spike plunged into the portal. Before the rush deafened him, he heard her insistent cry: "It was true! Spike, she meant it—" And then he was there, suddenly naked, one slick hand flexed around the rubbery wingbase, the other frantically reaching to regrasp the plunging swordhilt. At his back something flashed and rumbled; the portal closing. He had no time to think of it; devoid of his leather, he was getting seriously singed. The dragon was losing altitude; it would probably be killed on impact with the ground, but then so would he.

And Buffy, thinking him dead already, would never know he'd gone down a second time. A picture came into his head, as he flailed towards the bucking hilt, of her head, blonde hair swishing as she danced, glimpsed in that Roman nightclub. The last time he'd lain eyes on the real Buffy, and ever would.

It was all so bloody futile.

That was the idea in his mind as something flew past him and hit the dragon with a thwock that made it scream; as he lost purchase on the wing and began to fall; as the dragon zagged and dropped and he dropped too, bones crunching on slick concrete, consciousness flickering ... flickering ... black.

 

 

It was dark, and he was weak and sick, stomach empty and heaving with it, but he couldn't move. He struggled against the nausea, against the stiffness of his body pinned flat on his back.

Hell, this must be.

Then it wasn't anything.

 

 

The next time he was aware, it felt as if a lot of time had passed, or else that he was in a place outside of time. Hell was still all around him, pressing in on him with pain and absence, but he could see a light, faint and cool. In its glow, Buffy's face hoved into view, looking down at him, her hair dangling so that it almost but didn't quite brush against his skin.

"Huh," she said.

He tried to see past her, to see if he was back in the bed in that other Sunnydale, but he couldn't see anything. When he tried to speak, his mouth was a desert; no sound came out.

Then Buffy was gone. His body throbbed with hunger, but he still couldn't move.

He'd known, hadn't he, when he accepted the soul, that eventually there would be hell.

Hadn't quite pictured it like this.

 

Or that it would have the smell of hot blood in it. That someone would, none too tenderly, haul him half upright in a way that made his bones groan, his outraged muscles bunch and spasm, and put a cup to his lips. "Drink this."

It was Buffy, he knew the voice. Could smell her. The agony of her rough handling robbed him of breath. Blood spilled from the corners of his mouth, ran down his chin, but he swallowed some.

When the cup was empty, his mouth wiped clean, the arm that supported him was withdrawn; he crashed out flat again. The light wavered. Footsteps retreated.

"Wait—"

The footsteps stopped.

"What happened?" he asked. "Didn't it work? Thought I went through."

"Through what?"

"The portal. Jumped through. Didn't I?"

"You didn't jump through anything. You fell like a stone when I shot the dragon and now you're a bag of broken bones. Shut up and rest."

"B-Buffy?"

"Bingo. Now be quiet."

She was gone, and it was dark again. 

 

The next face he saw was Angel's.

"You look like shit," Spike said.

"Takes one to know one." 

 

When the light came back, it was brighter, and steady. The pain was a little less. He smelled Buffy, and the warm blood, before he saw her. She hauled him half upright, shoved a couple of pillows behind his back, and handed him the cup. This time he was able to hold it. As he drank, the pain receded more, or maybe he just cared less because he was eating.

She'd cut her hair a bit since before, when he'd made love to her.

Or—

A wave of uncertainty lifted and dashed him against a rocky unknown shore.

"I don't know where I am," he blurted. An abrupt sense of shame suffused him with uneasy warmth, as if he'd wet himself. All at once he wanted to cry. He felt like a little boy, strayed into a strange place and afraid he'd never see home again.

Buffy stared at him, grim-mouthed. "Where do you think you are, you stupid vampire?"

He knew then that he wasn't in Sunnydale, but he couldn't remember where he was supposed to be, or how he'd come to be so injured; panic crept up the length of him. Was his back broken? Could he feel his feet? Was he paralyzed? He shook his head.

Buffy's hand was on his forehead. It felt hot enough to make a brand on his already burned flesh.

"You never don't cheese me off, do you, Spike?"

"Don't mean to," he said, meekly. "Which ... which Buffy are you?"

"I'm the Buffy who's nursing you back to health so I can break every bone in your damn body all over again for holding out on me for a whole year while I mourned for you, and then didn't even have the courtesy to call me up and invite me to his bonehead apocalypse. That's which Buffy I am."

"Oh."

The best of all possible Buffys.

"You know, I'm not going to mention this confusion of yours to the others, and when you wake up next time, you're going to know what's the what. OK, Spike?"

"I ... I'll try."

"You won't try, you just will. Because I say so, and you so owe me, pal."

"I saw Angel."

"Did you? Then he's been out of bed when he was expressly told to stay put, so now I've gotta go read him the riot act too. Vampires. You put souls in 'em and it just makes them uppity."

She was gone, having taken the light, and all of time, with her. He fell backwards again into nothing. 

 

The dragon! Spike surged, twisting, grabbing into the air, and plunged. His head hit the floor with a crack; stomach churning. Footsteps, running, approached. The light shone, and then Buffy was bending over him, pulling him upright.

"What are you doing on the floor?" Infinite exasperation.

No dragon. Dragon dead. He remembered now. The only question was: where was this? He glanced around past Buffy; he was in a small, musty, shabby hotel room that looked as if it had been abandoned for fifty years.

The Hyperion, Angel's old place.

They'd fought the battle right outside.

Buffy was maneuvering him up; to his surprise, he was able to get his feet beneath him, to stand, but only for a few seconds before tumbling backwards into the bed.

"How did you come here?" he asked.

"On a plane. Duh."

"No, I mean—how did you know? That we needed you?"

She cocked her head, grinned with half her mouth, and held up her hand. "How many fingers?"

He grabbed it, past caring, and pressed a kiss into her palm. "How?"

To his surprise, she didn't snatch her hand back, but kept it curved around his battered cheek, and brushed a thumb softly across his lips. The touch lit him up, made all his knitting bones ache as if electricity was shooting through him.

"Angel called Giles, and Giles gave Angel the air, but he mentioned it to Andrew, and apparently Andrew knew you were still alive and the little shit never told me. I got here just in time to save all your hides. You're welcome."

She let her hand drop then, but when he caught it, she permitted it to rest in his. They both stared at her white pretty fingers, neatly manicured in pink, held in his bruised ones.

"She said she'd never lied to me, that you—"

"Huh?" Buffy glanced up, frowning, and detached herself to put her hands on her hips. "There you go again, with the brain salad."

"No salad. I was—never mind where I was. Thought you lied to me at the end, is what I'm sayin'."

Her frown deepened; she quivered so he thought she might hit out at him, or bolt for the door. All that repressed Buffy rage affected the local weather; the air shimmered around her.

"You are so stupid sometimes I want to pummel you."

"Know you do. But can you blame me this time?"

"I blame you! I blame ..." She fell silent. Her lip trembled, and then it was she who looked like the lost child.

Spike reached out, touched the back of his hand to her jaw. "No blame, Buffy. Forget that. Still here for you, I am, still ready to fight at your side. Your servant."

"I don't want a servant." She wouldn't look at him; she shied from his touch.

"Yeah, well, just sayin'."

The silence lengthened. Then she moved, it was sort of like a cat arching and spitting. "What? I'm still not getting through? What do you want? Poetry?"

The corners of his mouth jerked; he tried not to smile. If he smiled now, he thought, she might belt him. "Poetry'd be nice. Partial to poetry."

She fairly wailed. "I don't know any poems!" Then, waving a hand, "Wait, wait wait! Okay: Comelivewithmeandbemyloveandwewillallthepleasuresproveofsomething—somethingdumpetydum—and, oh, forget it. Okay?"

"You are a sentimental bit of skirt, Slayer. It's shocking, really."

"I am," she grumped, "but you always think I'm lying."

Always? He decided to assume this was a rhetorical exaggeration.

"Yeah, well, I'm set straight now," he said. "An' I accept, provided you mean to keep me in the style to which I'm accustomed. Plenty of balls-out violence, yeah, an' we subscribe to the fancy cable that gets all the footie."

"But I'm not keeping you chained in the basement. I don't have a basement anymore."

"Where then, shall I take up residence?"

She moved in close to him now, standing between his knees, hands resting on his shoulders, her face inches from his. Still pouting, but only pretending now to be disgruntled. Her eyes searched his; he felt her uncertainty as if it was a field of force between them. "I want us to sleep together. Spooned together, like ... and I want us to make love. Can we do that? In between the violence and the football and the inevitable screaming fights?"

He had to steel himself, when she said this. The words lifted him up and spun him around with a force that was almost centrifugal. He could have cried out, and fallen at her feet.

Instead he cocked his head, and showed her a bit of tongue. "Reckon so, if you want it. Between us, it's always how you say, Slayer."

"Is it?" He thought she might start to cry, but she gathered herself, and blinked, and the moment passed.

"Give us a kiss on it, pet."

She kissed him; a kiss soft as rain, salty as tears. But even as he returned it, she pulled him in, deepening and demanding—regaining, with her confidence, the Buffy force he was accustomed to and craved like blood. Her tugging hurt his battered frame, and he groaned, but she only took him harder for a long exquisite moment before stepping back.

"I guess you still have to heal." She was aroused, and sulky.

"Guess so, less you want to go easy on me."

Her eyes narrowed, and for a moment her tongue appeared between her lips. It was her Sluggo face. "I never do go easy on you, Spike."

"Why start now?" he agreed.

She sighed, and then, to his surprise, began to shrug out of her clothes. "Who says I can't be gentle? I can do gentle too. You think you know all about me, you stupid vampire, but I'll show you something new. Shove over."

He started to speak, but she stopped his mouth with her hand as she climbed across him. Her hair brushed his chest and made him shiver, a shiver that went straight to his groin.

There was nothing else to say right now anyway.

He'd wanted Buffy, and here she was.

 

~END~


	2. Not My Beautiful House Redux - an unfinished epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of course after _Not My Beautiful House_ I attempted an epilogue. And I got pretty far. So I'm posting it here. But the fic isn't complete, and is unlikely to be completed.

 

"Owwwwww!" 

"Oh, stop being such a baby." 

"I've got burns an' gashes over 80% of me, think that entitles me to whinge!" 

"You'll be all better by the day after tomorrow." Buffy touched a hand to the bandage on her neck. "Maybe even sooner, _greedy pig._ " 

"You said you'd tell me when to stop." 

She narrowed her eyes. "You still want to drain me dry." 

"Do not." 

Piqued silence crackled between them. 

"You can't deny you were having fun in that battle. I saw you." 

"Was fightin' for my bloody _life._ Not to mention my wedding tackle. You wouldn't've been best pleased if I came home without _that._ " 

"Just stop whining or else I'll get Anya in to nurse you instead." 

This threat was effective. Spike stayed almost quiet--there was the occasional gasp--while Buffy finished changing the moist dressings and settled him back again on a heap of cushions. She was more distraught than she wanted to let on--Spike _was_ badly injured, plainly in a good deal of pain, and ... and she couldn't stop thinking about the other Spike, who'd jumped through the portal just as it looked like a plunge from the dragon's back was imminent. 

Had he died? 

"Rest now." 

"Don't go." 

"I need to run over to Giles's and see Jemmie. She doesn't understand why she can't come home yet. Anya said she was fretting." 

"Want to see her myself, but this'll scare her." Spike reached for her hand. His were charred; he winced when she touched him, but he held on. 

"You promised you'd explain what all happened once I was cleaned up." 

"I think you should get some sleep. I really need to go to Jem." 

Spike started to frown, and grimaced. Facial expressions added to the agony of his roasted flesh. "There's more to this than me gettin' sucked into some random apocalypse already in progress, an' spit back out again before it was even done. What aren't you tellin' me?" 

She didn't know why she didn't want to talk about it. It wasn't that she was ashamed of making love to the other Spike. Maybe it was that she didn't want to let on how worried she was about him now he was gone. Getting her Spike back in one, albeit temporarily damaged, piece, should've been topmost in her mind, a thoroughgoing relief. But she couldn't stop thinking about the other one. 

A Spike with a soul. Was he really meant to just go down in that battle and wind up in hell? 

Those were some big assumptions. Maybe she could talk to Giles about it. 

"In a little while, I promise. I'm going to give you something that'll help you sleep, and when I get back, you'll drink some more blood, and then we'll discuss." 

"Your blood? Because ... think you've given me enough of that for a bit, my good girl." 

"Not mine, but human blood. I'll bring it back with me. So you'll heal up fast, okay?" 

He squeezed her hand, and she could tell he felt her anxiety, but thought it was all on his own account. "I'll be right as rain in a bit. Will want my that special anniversary shag I missed when I am." 

"Drink this." Buffy poured out the sleeping draught Tara had prepared, and held the glass to his lips. It was bright green and smelled terrible, but Spike closed his eyes and swallowed it down without a murmur. 

She sat beside him until his grip on her hand loosened. His pained breathing slowed and stopped; he was asleep. She could go.  
  
  
  


As she gathered up her bag and keys, getting ready to go to her daughter, a wave of faintness caught her. Buffy grabbed the edge of the counter as her knees went liquid. 

She took a deep breath. 

Not really as prepared, apparently, as she'd thought, for being fed on. She hadn't planned to offer herself, but once she saw how flattened and bled-out and burnt Spike was, prudence was the last thing on her mind. She'd put her head right into the lion's mouth, so to speak, and the lion had bit. 

It wasn't like the nips and sips of their lovemaking. Nor was it quite like that time she'd fed Angel to save his life. No struggle, no big mystical orgasm. Just a rush of relief that she had what Spike so direly needed--the sublime healing power of slayer blood. 

Now probably she needed a cookie--or five--before she got into the car. Then she'd feel fine. 

More deep breaths. Why so overwrought? Spike was back home, he'd be fine. Life would go on. 

Cookies tasted better when you could say they were for medicinal purposes. She unscrewed the third one and scraped the filling with her teeth. 

What, she wondered, would her counterpart in that other dimension do if she found out Spike had survived only to die again? 

Buy another pair of shoes? 

Rome. She couldn't imagine herself in Rome. She couldn't imagine herself having been so hard-hearted as not to succumb to Spike's enticements. Except enticements was the wrong word, that made it sound dirty. Wrong. She was sure by now that what they had wasn't wrong. Not even Giles thought it was wrong. Not even the Council, which had given her a raise this year. 

Charms. That was a better word. Spike's considerable and ultimately irresistible charms. 

How could the other Buffy have turned him aside over and over? 

He must've been a different kind of Spike, despite having all the same experiences as hers, up to that one point of divergence. He must've been meaner, viler, more up-your-nose. Of course he wouldn't have told her all about _that_ , now he was all souled up and conscientious with it. 

Her Spike never remotely felt a need for a soul. Sure, he'd rib her sometimes about Angel, about how sleeping with him would never result in a morning after like Angelus had given her. No soul, no danger. Am what I am, he liked to say. No surprises. 

The idea of a soul for him had never come up--it had never occurred to her to be possible. 

But he knew it was. The other Spike. How did he know? 

She still couldn't fathom it. Feeling the need for a soul, going to fight for it. It was extraordinary. Supercallafragalisticextraordinary. Unprecedented. 

The sixth cookie made her feel a little squishy in the stomach, and her head was clear now, so she got on the road. 

As she drove through the sunny streets of Sunnydale, she kept flashing back on her glimpses into the battle. Was it over? Had he survived? Was there any possible way to find out? 

  
  


***

 

"Slayer, can I tell you something?" 

He knew she wasn't asleep, but there was a drawn out moment when she didn't move, or answer. She was wrapped around him, her head on his shoulder, an arm and leg snugged across his body. Keeping him warm, enveloping him in her pulse, her aroma. 

Holding him. 

"Is it something that's gonna make me mad?" 

"I dunno. Hope not. But ... might could." 

She sighed. "Is it about why you didn't call me for a whole year? Because we need to go into that thoroughly so I can berate you for it. In detail." 

"Only peripherally. Maybe it could wait." 

"No. Tell me. Now while we're temporarily too tired to fuck, is when we make pillow talk." 

She'd kept up this peremptory, rather bossy tone all the while she'd made love to him--he was still too banged up to do much more than lie on his back and gasp as she rode him. Though intense, her ministrations were, as boasted, gentle, and almost reverent, even while she dropped testy little remarks that needed to gainsay the tenderness of the kisses she lavished on his mouth and body, and the slow delicate grind of a fuck she delivered when, after preliminaries that made him groan and plead, she put him inside. 

He let this distract him from what he'd meant to say. " _Are_ you tired out?" 

" _You_ are." 

"Not so much I couldn't--" He shifted a hand, wriggled it under her thigh. Her wet pussy was pressed up tight against his hip, like an open-mouth kiss. He found her clit, still swollen and gently pulsing, and rubbed his thumb across it. Buffy grunted and wriggled. 

"Come for me again, pet. Love to watch you spend." 

She lifted her head, and squinted at him, even as her hips were doing a probably unconscious little jig against his hand. 

"This is--" 

"What?" 

A deeper squint, a catch in her breath; she bit her lip. "This is how we are now?" 

"What do you mean?" He pulled his hand away. Knew it was too good to be true, but unsure what he'd done already to blow it up. 

"Hey!" She grabbed his fingers, guided them back. She was freshly slick, her clit standing up hard; she pressed herself against his hand. "Just ... yeah ... like that. That feels good." She rocked into him. "Oh God. Oh Spike ... what if I didn't--what if--" She began to shake, and to his surprise, tears dotted her cheeks. He wasn't sure whether to go on or to pull her into his arms, or to withdraw altogether. Except that she grabbed his wrist in both of her hands, and that pretty much precluded anything except watching in deep awe and excitement as she frigged herself on his fingers until she came with a high strange cry. 

When she let go of him, she was definitely sobbing. 

"This is how ... this is what we ... oh God. Oh God." 

"Buffy?" 

She sounded angry again. "You are--you are so--" But couldn't keep it up. "If you're going to be a big stupid hero trying to get yourself killed again, will you _call me_ first?" 

"Thought I could just roll over an' tell you, yeah?" 

"Roll over ... oh. Does that mean you're going to--? I'm not used to this." 

"What?" 

"Assuming we'll be together. We will be, right?" Another sob shook her; he thought it was embarrassment. Poor slayer didn't know how to be affectionate and natural with the likes of him. 

"Better'n my wildest dreams, this is." 

"No." 

"No?" 

"Spike, I _know_ you never _dared_ imagine that I'd ever really ...." 

She snuggled in again. Her body was like a lovely hot compress all down his side. 

"No, I never did, but that doesn't mean I'm turnin' it down. Not ... not again." 

"Good. That's ... good." She sighed. "So what were you going to tell me, before?" 

***

 

 

She couldn't tell Giles. She was all set to bring it up, she'd made up a topic sentence in the car, and a series of subsidiary, explanatory sentences, so she wouldn't get all twisted up and side-tracked off the subject of Soul: Alterna-Spike's Having Of. 

But then she walked into the house and Anya started in on her about how half the attachments for her Cuisineart were missing, and Jemima demanded a piggyback ride _now Mamma, Mamma NOW,_ and Giles had that fuzzy, pleasant expression on his face that meant he was enjoying his domestic chaos, and she didn't want to put him in a state of unenjoyment because anyway there was nothing they could do about it. 

So she hoisted her daughter up onto her shoulders, and jogged slowly around the room with her while explaining that she hadn't _borrowed_ all the attachments in the first place, and in the back of her mind a little voice said, _He doesn't need a soul, it's just a complication, and you should forget about it because you're happy and it's all good._

Then she told Jemima she would stay another night with Auntie Anya and Uncle Rupert, and played with her some more, and drank a cup of Anya's excellent coffee, and thanked Giles again for getting Spike back safely, and only when she was alone again in her car did she find herself unable to catch her breath, because it was unbearable not to know what had happened to the other Spike. 

She was so afraid that he was dead. 

  
  
  
  


***

He wondered why, now he was bedded down most satisfactorily with the proper Buffy, he was still thinking so much about the other one, and her whole set up. After all, it had nothing to do with him ... with _them._ Were they a them? Seemed a bit early days to be certain, but Buffy was being uncharacteristically cuddlesome and languid; he'd never known her to lie so long after a fuck as she was now. "Pet, tell me something. I know you didn't want me that way, but ... did you ever think what it _would_ be like, if you an' me were to be an item?" 

"I remember telling you once that I couldn't see it at all." 

" ... I remember that too." 

"Why are you asking me? Are you worried about something? Spike, I'm not going to walk away from you. I'll never do that again." 

"Love, you never have." 

"What else have I ever done? What did I do there at the end?" 

" _Never_." 

"Okay, okay." She made her _I disagree_ face, but let it go. "I don't know ... I just think of that terrible crypt of yours and how we smashed it all up every time. We didn't ... uh ... we didn't really spend much time together." 

"Yeah. Wasn't exactly domestic, was it? We've never even sat down to a meal." 

"There was that Thanksgiving when--" 

"Was tied to a bloody chair. Anyway, that was before I liked you." 

A funny look came over her face. "Do you like me, Spike?" 

"What kind of bloody foolish question is that?" 

"Liking is different from loving. We both know that." 

"'Course I like you, Slayer." 

"Like a fat kid like cake?" 

He didn't like her in the role of supplicant. It made him uneasy. 

Buffy waited. As his silence lengthened, as he felt it lengthen, a panic rose in him--he should have reassured her instantly. The longer it took, the less she would believe him. Yet he couldn't get his lips to move. Couldn't find the words--him. Always so glib, yet now-- 

She glanced around, as if there was a boogieman looming just behind her. "Oh shit. Here I am making all these assumptions about _us_ , only there is no us. You're going to stay here and be all renouncey with Angel, right?" 

"Slayer--" 

"No! Don't tell me! I don't want to hear--" 

She leapt up. He leapt up after her, grabbed her by the shoulders. Her head spun; the tips of her hair struck his face with a soft lash that might've cut like fibreglass. She was crying, sobs bubbled up like air through oil. He coaxed her back to the bed, sat her down. 

"Don't torment yourself over me. It's not right." 

"When I thought you were dead, Spike--that's when I found out how much you meant to me. What I'd have liked us to have." She looked up. "Maybe I didn't think about what we'd be like together, but now I _know_ what I want. I want to us to be together. And I want you to be able to live like the good man you are." 

He didn't feel like a good man, or, sod _man_ , even a good vampire. The main emotion that welled up in him at her declaration was shame. She sounded like the Other Buffy. In so many ways he wasn't ready for this. Couldn't step into the slayer's glad acceptance as into a bower, no matter how much she might say he'd earned it at last. 

Nothing to be done about the feeling, though, except feel it. He wasn't going to, as she put it, 'be all renouncey'. 

"Will live with you if you like it, Slayer. Or near you, or anywhere you point me." 

"I want you to do what _you_ like," she chided. "Don't tell me you've forgotten how?" 

He thought of that bed he'd come to in, king size, surrounded by all those flickering votives. In the house, the room, that once belonged to Buffy's mother, a woman who had taken on in memory, without Spike's really noticing, a hallowed aura. Again his mind spun around the whole idea that he could ever possibly be a real inmate of that house. Be a husband to Buffy, friend to all her friends, a father to her child. Buffy with a child! He flashed on himself as he once was--new to Sunnydale, cocky at taking out The Annoying One, half-sick with dread about Dru, and consumed with the idea of killing Buffy. That incarnation of Spike would've stabbed out his own heart at the mere idea of living with her that way. 

There was nothing in the demon instruction manual about how to go about the unEvil life. How to be consort to a slayer. All those years with Dru only taught him how to tend an imperious mistress who was off her trolley two-thirds of the time. 

His bones ached. Suddenly he wanted to be alone, to think. 

Buffy had stopped crying. Now she looked angry. "You're being awfully quiet about my scheme for us." 

"I am, pet. Sorry. It's only that I'm in a bit of pain." 

"Sorry, I'll dial down the intensity." To his surprise, she kissed his nose, and clambered up from the bed. "You still have a lot of healing to do. Don't worry about anything, okay? I know you're not gonna go anywhere without me, and neither am I." 

He watched her resume her clothes, amidst a tinge of relief. Another thing he wasn't used to was simple kindness from Buffy. He knew her heroic kindness, the I'll Come For You kindness. But here was only the ordinary kind, that two people showed to each other, give and take, share and share alike. It bemused him, brought the shame up again to crackle beneath the surface of his skin. 

"Angel around? Might ... might send him in if he is." 

"You want to see _Angel_?" 

"Just for a mo'. Then I'll go to sleep, I promise." 

Buffy shrugged. "I'll tell him. It's your funeral."  
  
  


***

She'd put Jemima down for her nap and was getting into her car to go home to Spike when Giles came out the side door. 

"Wait a moment, Buffy." 

Her first instinct was to say "Gottarushseeyabye" and peel out, but that was immediately followed by a weird rush of relief when she saw Giles' expression--his best tender, penetrating look. 

"Something's the matter. What is it? We can talk out here." 

"Get in the car." 

When he was settled beside her, Buffy gripped the wheel, staring at her hands as she took a deep breath. "There was a thing. Which I didn't tell you." 

"Fancy that." 

"No, it's really not funny. That Spike, who was here ... he has a soul." 

The look--the series of looks--that crossed Giles' face in the next moments were, as Spike would've said, bettern' a picture show. 

"Buffy--how? Are you sure?" 

"Well, my Soulometer is at the shop, but I'm sure he was telling me the truth. It isn't the kind of thing Spike would just _claim._ He didn't get it as a curse, like Angel. He wanted it and he fought for it, so he could ... so he could make amends to me, and be ... be all right around me." 

"Amends." 

"There was stuff that went on between them that's different than what happened here. But that doesn't seem all that important to me, compared to--" 

" _Where_ did he get it?" 

She told Giles everything she knew, and telling it made it seem even bigger, like a huge moat, or a maze she was trapped in. She was confused--she'd never wanted Spike to have a soul, never fantasized about it. Before she changed her mind about him, his soulnessness was of course part of her contempt for him--the only vampire she'd ever be able to love was the one with a soul, because of course she could only love a man with a soul. And that was true, until ... until it wasn't anymore. Spike was the exception, and now that she'd grown up some, she was less hung up on rules about who she would and would not love, and why. Now he was her partner, and even as she understood his limitations, she cherished and respected him. Trusted him, even without a soul, to choose right, even if the only moral compass he had was hitched to her own, like a gear that needs another gear to turn it. 

So it baffled and frightened her that she was so taken up with this other Spike. She was disappointed in herself. It shouldn't matter. He was gone now, case closed. 

She finished explaining to Giles with, "I don't want you to tell Spike. If he found out, you know he'd take it as a dig. He'd think I'm dissatisfied with him, and I'm so not. Nothing has changed. But now I _know_ there's this other Spike, and that he ... I wish I didn't know. One of those pesky Willowesque forgetting spells would go real good now." 

"I know you don't mean that." 

"Of course I don't mean it. But I do mean Ignorance Is Bliss." 

"I must say I'm intrigued. Had I known before we sent him back--" 

"I didn't want him to tell you, or any of the others. Because I knew it would turn into a big _thing_ , especially if someone like Xander got a hold of it." 

"But you're telling me now." 

She squirmed. "We always keep too many secrets. It never goes well. But it can't get back to Spike. You know it would hurt him." 

"Aren't you going to tell him anything? I think you must." 

"Oh, I will. Just _not_ the soul part." She peered at Giles. "What do you think about it?" Waited for him to polish his glasses--which sure enough he did, a definite sign that Giles had a lot of big thinky thoughts on the subject. 

"I'm rather floored. I would very much have liked to have any opportunity to question him. His story is unprecedented as far as I know--I'd have liked to learn how he found out where to go, what the trials consisted of ... and I'd have liked to probe him on what it was exactly that prompted him to take on a soul quest in the first place." 

"A lot of rotten things all piling up together, apparently." She still couldn't wrap her head around the _attempted rape_ part. Obnoxious as Spike could be, that kind of thing was never remotely like his MO with her--or anyone else as far as her personal experience of his nefarious acts in Sunnydale went. She knew about Cecily ... and shied away from the knowledge. Her habit with Spike was to focus very much on the now. He'd been clean for a good few years, meant to continue so, and--and--they'd all decided that was good enough for getting on with. 

"Listen Giles. There's another aspect of this that's got me kind of confused. How the other Spike reacted to everything here. He didn't approve.å" 

"Didn't approve?" 

"He thought less of me than of his own Buffy, because I loved him without a soul. Oh, he didn't _say_ it in so many words, but it was painfully clear. And even though the other Buffy was obviously a flaming bitch to him after she was resurrected, he defended her, like that treatment was all he deserved. And then two years later she left him to die in the hellmouth and he thought that was perfectly all right." Realizing her nose was all winched up, she forced herself to relax. "It was so _strange_ , him being all Mr Right & Wrong. He was so tough on ... on himself and me and everything." 

"I can imagine." 

"There's nothing to do about it," she shrugged. "But I guess I feel a little better for mentioning it." 

Giles was quiet for a full half-minute. Then: "Buffy, if we could discover the way, would you want Spike to regain his soul?" 

The answer burst from her: "That's not for me to choose! I never want Spike to believe that he isn't good enough for me. He's been very good for me, he's good for me every day. Especially now we have Jemima, I don't want anything to undermine him." 

"And that's why you don't want Spike to know. You don't want him to feel impelled to make that choice." 

"Even if I told him a hundred million times that it doesn't matter, you _know_ he'd believe it did, and he'd either go through forests of flaming stakes to get it, or ... or he wouldn't, but he'd always _think_ I wanted him to, and he'd start to resent me, he wouldn't want to but he wouldn't be able to help himself. Either way, it would overwhelm everything we have, everything we are together. I just can't do that to him." 

Again Giles was quiet. Buffy began to think he was marshalling his authority to explain to her why she was wrong wrong wrong. Instead, he laid a hand over hers on the steering wheel. 

"You have turned into such a remarkable young woman, Buffy." 

"... I have?" 

"Your heart just shines." After a long, eloquent squeeze, Giles' withdrew his hand; opened the door and stepped out. "Your instincts are sound, and a credit to your loving nature. Try not to worry unduly. If Spike's destiny is to find a soul, it will come to pass whether you bring it up or not. I'm generally not in favor of secrets, but in this case I agree it's best to keep mum." 

Giles was halfway back to the door when Buffy rolled down her window. "I worry about him, though! The other Spike. Is there some way--" 

But when Giles turned to look back at her, she shook her head hard. "No! He's not mine to worry about. He's ... he's somewhere that's else, and ... and I've got all the Spike I need right here." 

As she drove back towards Revello, Buffy blinked hard, swallowing down her uncertainty, drawing her focus back into the here-and-now. All the Spike she needed or wanted, all the Spike there really _was_ , was in her bed right now, waiting for her. She wasn't going to stint him in favor of another who was nothing now but a phantom.  
  
  
  


***

Angel lurched in. This time Spike registered what he'd been too out of it to see before: the old man was banged up about as badly as a vampire could be and still carry on. The all-over bruises were fading a bit--it had been a few days--but he had a pronounced limp, favored his left arm, and his face bore the weariness that came of enduring dull relentless pain. 

"What?" he said. 

Spike put on a grin to mask his twinge of sympathy. "She chose _me_. Plighted her troth, an' all. You were so bloody sure she never cared for me. You were wrong." 

He'd wanted to see Angel gnash his teeth a bit, argue with him, make a fool of himself. He also wanted Angel to tell him that he was mistaken, that the last thing he should be doing right now was taking Buffy for a given. 

But all he did was shrug. "She told me, yeah. I was wrong there all right." 

" _Told you?_ " 

Angel made a vague gesture. "Get your gloat on, William. Go on, don't hold back. My quarter's in the jukebox, let's hear Spike's Greatest Hits." 

"You know the tune," Spike grumbled. "Spoilsport." 

Standing at the foot of Spike's bed, Angel was a colossus about to tumble. "Is that all you wanted to say to me?" 

He turned to leave. 

Spike sprang forward, his muscles screaming, and caught his arm. "Siddown. You look tired." What Angel really looked was defeated, bewildered, and ... lonely. Like a one-man blasted heath. Must be a side effect of having slayer juice dried on his own cock and lips, so delicious he never wanted to wash it off, that Spike caught himself feeling sorry for his grandsire. He'd lost out, for sure. 

"So what's next for you? Angel Investigations Mark II?" 

The suggestion made Angel look sick; his gorge rose. He stared at his knees. "Everyone who helped me, except for you, is dead. My fault. If Buffy hadn't turned up, we'd both be dead. I'm done with trying to run the show." 

"Done? How can you say that? We all went in with eyes open. An' this round goes to us, yeah? You an' me both, we're supposed to carry on the mission." 

Angel's shoulders sank another quarter inch. He shook his head even as he said, "Faith ... Faith asked me to join her in Cleveland. Says they could use some help. I'm thinking I might go. She and I understand each other, at least." 

"Faith reports to Giles, doesn't she? Giles abandoned us." 

Angel shook his head. "You gonna tell Buffy to take a hike because she reports to Giles?" 

"Doesn't report to him. Hasn't _reported_ to anyone in years." But now he mentioned it, Spike wondered how that was going to work. Giles had tried to kill him back in Sunnydale, and now with this latest display of mistrust, he had blood on his hands. The lines were drawn. Spike sure wasn't planning to trust Rupert anytime this century. He'd have to talk to Buffy about that. Though he was pretty sure her continued association with him was a case of necessity making strange bedfellows. She'd been plenty sore enough when she'd discovered Giles' betrayals--but the Council had been decimated, there were thousands of slayers now, and they needed some kind of organization. All experienced hands on. 

Angel blinked. "I keep thinking if I go out there, to Faith. Probably get her killed too." 

"Better go somewhere low an' eat rats," Spike murmured. He braced himself, hoping Angel would cuff him, or tumble him to the floor. 

But all he did was nod. "That's Plan B." 

_Pillock._

"What about wolfgirl? Thought you were sweet on her." 

"Best reason in the world to never see her again." 

"What's her number? M'gonna call her." 

"What, now you have to have _all_ my women?" 

" _No_ , idjit. Meant I'm gonna summon her to come along and see about you. You need ... need a bit of kindness." 

"If I'd known that was all you had to say, I'd have stayed in my room." 

"Angel, wait a sec'." 

" _What_?" 

"Do you think ... did you really mean ... doesn't seem ... out of line to you ... me an' Buffy?" 

"Since when do you give a shit what I think about anything?" 

"Never. Only--" 

"You're pathetic," Angel growled. 

"Yeah," Spike said. "Forget it."  
  


~~~

 

"Were you scared?" 

Spike swallowed the last of the blood, and set the empty insulated mug on the bedside table. 

"Been alone in the house before, pet." 

"I don't mean just now, doofus. I mean, in that other place." 

"Wasn't time. Woke up in the middle of battle, some kind of huge demon invasion, there I was, sword in my hand, an' it was fight or die. Fight 'an die, maybe, except that suddenly I was home again. Still waiting for you to fill me in." He reached for her, comforting himself by combing his fingers through her hair. 

Buffy caught at his hand. Sometimes, when he looked at her so fondly, so trustingly, she had to battle tears. 

"You look better. You healed a lot just while I was gone." 

"I did. An' I had such a dream just now, about your sopping little cunny, an' woke up with such a stiffy you wouldn't believe." 

She smiled. "I don't see it now." 

"Had to take care of it on my own, didn't I? You were out. Never mind, I'll have another later on, I always do. Now you tell me this tale, else I'll start to get cross with you." 

"Giles says there was a dimensional accident. That battle was going on in a parallel world to this. There's another you, who was fighting in it, and he ended up here while you were there." 

"Suspected it was somethin' like that. And?" 

"He was a lot like you. Very brave. Fighting on the right side." 

"But. Sounds like there was some way of tellin' us apart?" 

For a horrible second Buffy thought he _knew._ Was there something in that other dimension that tipped him off? Or had he--had her Spike regained his soul while he was there, only to have it stripped away again when--no. It couldn't be that, because the Spike that was here had his soul. It was only clothes that got erased in the transfer. 

Smiling slyly, Spike reached for her again. The burns on his hands were all scabbed over now, and would soon be gone altogether, but when he caressed her face, she felt their roughness on her cheek. 

"I didn't know he wasn't you. Not until he told me." 

"An' when was that?" 

"I came home, we started fooling around, you know, like we'd planned--and then he told me he was in the wrong place. He was surprised by how things are here." 

"Surprised." 

"He loved his Buffy, just like you love me ... but it was different. They're not together like we are. They're not together at all." 

"Ah. Come here, love." He tugged her in close, so she had to give up her ministering wife stance and crawl up into his lap. Spike slipped a hand up into her shirt, springing the catch of her bra in the front. Ran a rough-edged finger against one nipple and then the other, so they stood up at attention. Then tearing the shirt away with one hard yank, he buried his face in her breasts, kissing them, mouthing the powdery undersides. Beneath her thigh, through the quilt, she felt his cock stir. Apparently the direction this explanation was going in excited him. 

"So he told you he was the wrong Spike but that he fancied a tumble anyway." 

"No. He said he was the wrong Spike and he was wigged that we lived together and had Jemmie because--" _\--because he didn't think he deserved anything like that._ She bit back on this last part. "... because it was just so different from his experience." 

"Hell, gets to me sometimes too, can't believe it's happenin'. Wake up thinkin' it's all got to be a cosmic joke. Never had such luck in all my days as I've had since you come to me. So, t'other Spike, he was out of sorts ... an' then he fancied a tumble even so?" 

" _No._ She--the other me--never found her way to him. She couldn't do it. They weren't lovers, and then there was an apocalypse, and Sunnydale was destroyed in the battle, and he stopped the end of the world, and he _died_. Well, the death was only temporary, but neither of them knew that, going in. She just left him to die in the hellmouth, and he hasn't seen her since, he never told her he isn't dead, and so ...." 

"You gave him a tumble." 

"All right, yes! I'm trying to make you _understand._ Why I needed to make love to him." 

Spike's erection was heavy, pressing up against her bottom; he buried his mouth in her neck just as she most wanted to see the expression on his face. 

"Do you? Understand?" 

"Can only wonder how the poor bugger could tear himself out of your arms." 

"Because he knew he had to. Had to fight that battle. Had to bring _you_ back safe to me and Jem." 

"So, did you give him a good time, before he went off to die again? Fuck him here in our bed, did you?" 

"Yes. And yes." 

"You liked it? He brought you off?" Spike went on kissing her, feeling her breasts. She had to force herself to sit still. 

"Yeah. We were both very excited. It was ...." 

"An' what was he like?" 

"He was ... you. Just like you." 

Spike looked up then. "Couldn't have been." 

"No, he was. He loved his Buffy, he was you--" 

He shook his head. "Couldn't be. Didn't have you. We both know, if you hadn't come to me, I'd be all gone. I'd be in the wind. What was he fightin' for, if not her?" 

"Oh, she made him fight, all right. She kept him close, he fought at her side, but she didn't ... there wasn't any ...." She thought of how he'd looked at her, the other Spike, what he'd said. When the whole thing about souls came up, when he understood that she loved a Spike who had none. His incredulity. His judgment. Oh, he'd been nice, friendly and sweet about it, but nothing he'd said or done could erase that initial reaction, the doubt and disappointment in her he couldn't conceal. 

"So how'd she keep him on the rails, if not by love? An' what was he doin' without her? You said she thought he was dead." 

"I don't know. We didn't get to that." The lie brought her out in blushes, but Spike didn't seem to notice that; he was prodding her up so he could pull away the quilt that divided them. "Let's not talk about it anymore, okay? I need you to give me this big cock." 

"Want to." 

"I know you do." She seized his prick, thinking of the other Spike, how he'd taken her like he was starving for it, and like he couldn't quite believe what was happening. Thought of the affair he'd described, with the other Buffy, how it was violent and cold. How she was so cold to him, and how sure he was that she'd done right. 

She'd long since begun to think of her life with Spike as an inevitability. When she was most broken, he alone, of all her friends, knew how to fix her ... or not to fix her, but to make a space for her to slowly fix herself. What was it that had happened in that other Sunnydale, to turn it out so badly? She couldn't imagine not wanting Spike, not falling for him. What kind of girl was that other Buffy, able to take him in her arms, over and over, close up inside her, and not break open for him? She must be some kind of desperado, to fuck and never care. 

Or to care, and keep it in, like a horrible punishment for them both ... waiting until it was too late, until he was irretrievably plighted to die. 

"You're so wet," Spike murmured. "Were you all wet like this for him? Did he lick out your snatch before he had you?" He explored her with his fingers, his other hand starfished on her back, holding her close. "Did you suck his cock?" 

"Yes. For a long time. Because I knew he'd want that especially, because she ... I wanted to be good to him." 

"Like you are to me. Christ, yeah, touch it like that. Oh love." 

"Do you want it in my mouth?" 

"Put me inside you, love. Got to have a fuck. Got to kiss you." 

If he survived, maybe he'd find her. Maybe he'd find out she meant it, and she'd seize her second chance with him. Maybe it would be all right after all. 

Spike sank in deep, with the side-to-side wriggle that made her shudder. "Oh love. Fuck. That's good, yeah. Oh, you fuck like heaven. You're my heaven." 

His kisses were slow and probing, and he took his time between her wide-spread thighs, not taking any particular rhythm, making them both wait. She smiled up at him. "Five years, Spike." 

"That's right, Slayer. An' every hour of it sweet." 

  
  


***

They were polishing weapons the next morning. The two vampires downstairs for the first time since the big battle, both still a little wobbly, Buffy suggesting an inventory of the armaments as a way to keep them from weakly sniping at each other and also, Spike thought, so he'd have something to do with his hands that wasn't touching her. He wasn't sure she wanted him to touch her now. She'd been scarce the last day, after that talk they'd had. He'd waited for her to creep into his bed, but she hadn't done it. 

Today she wore a baseball cap with a long bill that made it hard to see her eyes, and that felt deliberate, a distancing. 

None of them was saying more than 'pass that rag' when the Hyperion's door opened and a woman walked in. Buffy spotted her first and was on her feet and half-way to her before Angel glanced up and gasped. 

Buffy said, "You decided to come. I'm glad you decided to come." 

"It was you who called--? Oh. Oh God, Angel." She glanced at Buffy, but even as she glanced she swerved, and ran past her, jogged right up to the Old Man, who lumbered to his feet, mace in one hand and greasy cloth in the other. 

Spike would've thought she was going to throw her arms around him, but Nina came to a skidding stop on the dusty marble just short of Angel, who stared at her frozen for a long moment, until Buffy came up and relieved him of the mace. 

"I went through your wallet while you were sleeping, and found her number. I thought she should have the chance to know you were still around, and I suspected you'd never tell her yourself. So yeah, I'm a meddling so-and-so. Spike, c'mere, let's give them some privacy." 

With one voice, Angel and Nina said, "Don't go." 

Spike couldn't help laughing. He stuck a hand out to Nina. "'Lo, Wolf-girl. Good to see you again." 

Hesitantly, she shook; heistantly, she smiled. "And you. Spike, right?" 

"That's one of his names," Buffy said. "Mine's Buffy. You've probably heard nothing whatsoever about me." 

"Not ... not from Angel, no. But--" She squinted. "Yeah, I see what they meant, when they said he has a type." 

"Who said?" Angel looked ambushed, miserable. 

Nina half-turned to him, still hesitant. "Your friend--" 

"My friends are all dead. Do you get it now, why I gave you those plane tickets?" 

"Still not so much." 

Shaking his head, Angel sank back into his seat on the pouffe. 

"Your type, you big pillock--small, blonde, _brave_. You never do get that, do you?" 

"I wasn't going to ask her to be brave. I wasn't going to get her mixed up in--" 

"It would've been nice to be told what the hell was going on." 

"Hell. You got it in one. Which is why I needed you and your family _out_." 

Staring at Angel's hunched shoulders, his lowered head--he wasn't looking at her--Nina looked poised to retreat. "Maybe I shouldn't have come here." 

Buffy crossed her arms. "He'll make the same mistake over and over again if someone doesn't intervene. But if you're not in love with him ... if you don't want a big mopey undead guy who thinks he's too special and _doomed_ to be a boyfriend ... well, I did what I could. So you'll get no stick from me." 

Angel said, "Buffy, you _know_ it's more complicated than--" and Nina said, "I never said I wasn't in love with him. We ... we didn't get up to that. But I thought we might." 

"Well, have at it. Spike and I will--" 

" _No_." Angel was back up on his feet now. "Buffy. You ... you can just go with Spike. You don't have to set me up with some kind of _distraction_ \--" 

"Distraction!?" This time it was Nina and Buffy who chorused. 

"I'm no one's distraction!" Nina added. 

She was half-way to the door in a blink. "If you don't go after her, you great nance, I _will_ pulverize you," Spike said. "An' Slayer will be glad to help, I suspect." 

Angel made a sort of jump, like someone had goosed him. After a brief whispered struggle, Nina permitted him to accompany her out into the hotel's ruined garden, where there was shade at that hour. 

Buffy picked up another throwing star and a fresh rag. 

"That was decent of you," Spike said. "Was thinkin' of doin' the same myself, but hadn't just gotten round to it yet." 

"Well, he needs her. If he'd just admit it. Though carrying her name and number around is kind of admit-y, I guess." 

"Yeah it is." 

Buffy polished her star, and Spike picked up Angel's discarded mace. 

After a couple of minutes, when the star was just about as bright as it could be--she held it up to the light, though there wasn't much, as the windows were filthy and half the lightbulbs burnt out--Buffy said "So, do you think he's kissing her right now?" 

"Ought to be, if he's smart." 

"He's a persuasive kisser." 

"Yeah," Spike said. "I mean--is he?" 

Buffy paused. "Okay, I heard that. Don't try to back-pedal." 

"Was a long time ago, pet." 

"Oh, I'm _sure_ it was." 

"An' not like you think." 

"You don't know _what_ I think." 

"True," he said, diffident. "Often I don't. Go so far as to say: mostly, maybe." 

"For instance, you obviously don't know that I've been waiting all morning for you to kiss _me_." 

" _Have_ you?" 

"I have." 

"Was under the impression that all this was in aid of me doin' nothin' of the sort." 

"Well, that's wrong." 

"And what was stoppin' you from planting one on me? Didn't want to do it in front of Old Broodypants, could've made some excuse to go in the other room." 

"True." She shrugged. "I was giving you space. I thought that was what you needed." 

"Ah?" 

"Spike--" 

He leaned forward, reached out and flipped the baseball cap off her head. Buffy blinked. Her pupils were dilated; he watched them get smaller. Her eyes were fixed on him, two cameras focusing. 

"You don't like my hat?" 

"That's about it, yeah." 

She kicked it. They watched it slide across the marble and disappear into the shadows. "No more hat." 

"Well well." 

She rose, and collapsed into his lap. He just barely managed to avoid dropping the mace on his own foot. "Might Angel say that you also are a persuasive kisser? Because I would say that." 

"Would you now?" 

"Yes. Persuasive is the word I'd use. Also: exciting. Also also: melty." 

"I'm a melty kisser?" 

"No, you make me melty. When you kiss me." 

"Like this?" 

It was a few moments before she could speak. "See?" She breathed against his parted lips. "Here I am, all persuaded." 

Ignoring the soft inner prompting that, thinking of the other Buffy, asked _What took you so much longer?_ he kissed her some more. 

  
  


***

So everything was beautiful. She'd told Spike the truth--not all of it, but the salient part, anyhow, about sleeping with the other Spike, and it was all good. And his burns were gone, and Jemmie was back home, and life was going on. Except that in those moments when her mind was free to roam, while the bacon fried or she waited outside the school for Jem to come out, or as she drove back from the supermarket, she thought of him. 

Not just thought. He was _there._ They had _arguments._

Arguments about her choices. Arguments about souls. Arguments about why the other Buffy had waited so long to tell her heart, if it _was_ her heart and not a lie dropped out of pity. 

It got to the point that everyone started to notice how preoccupied she was. 

It got to the point that Spike became suspicious: "You're not on the rag, so what's the matter with you? Not pregnant, are you? No, I'd smell it if you were. Broody, then? Or just bored? A little depressed. Better tell me." 

"There's nothing to tell. I'm fine!" 

"You're not. But never mind, don't talk if you don't want to." 

"I talk. I'm talky! But I've got nothing to say. I'm fine. We're fine. Jem's fine." 

The next night Spike went out alone after patrol, got blotto, started a huge fight at Willy's, and ended up in the Sunnydale cop-shop's drunktank, from which he phoned her at six a.m. to bail him out. The next day he gave her a big bottle of _Joy_ that she knew he'd stolen--their send-Jemmie-to-college budget had no room for $350/ounce perfume, and anyway, he wouldn't have had such a self-satisfied smirk when he presented it to her if he'd paid for it--and later she'd found their bed filled with the silky fresh petals of pink and white peonies--also probably stolen--which he cleaned up himself the morning afterwards, without being told, while she was in the bath. 

All these gestures, which she found charming despite herself, were obvious responses to her state of preoccupation, but she couldn't shake the obsessive thoughts of the other Spike. Was _he_ getting to fill other!Buffy's bed with purloined peonies? Or was he a greasy streak of ash on the pavement? 

At least hers was clueless on that score. He had it in his head that she wanted another child; when at length she convinced him that it wasn't this at all, he decided she was missing Joyce. When he proposed this, she grasped it with a kind of gratitude: "Yes! I guess that's it. Sometimes it feels like I only just lost her." 

"Know all about that," Spike said, folding her into his arms. 

  
  


***

She moved his hand from her knee up her thigh--she was wearing a summer dress, her legs bare, the skirt rucked up rather high as she sat in his lap. He let it rest there a moment, then put it back on her knee. Her tongue paused in its probing, and she pulled back. 

"What the matter?" 

"Nothin'. Kissing you. Thought my kisses were persuasive and satisfying." 

"No ... I mean, _yes_ ... it's just ... I'm encouraging you to feel me up, and you're not." She glanced around, towards the door Angel and Nina had gone through fifteen minutes before. "Maybe we should go upstairs?" 

Buffy clambered up from his knee, plucked at his hand. "I vote for upstairs. I want you to ravish me." 

_Ravish?_ He knew he shouldn't read anything into that word but at the same time he couldn't believe she'd just say it like that, so lightly, like they both didn't know ravish was just the polite euphemism for rape. 

She caught up to it in a second or two, and her face fell, but quickly rallied as she seized both his hands, squeezed. "I mean, let's go to bed. Let's go to bed, and be nice to each other with no clothes on." 

_Feel sure you're gonna burn me, just dunno when._ The unbidden thought made him wince. Buffy saw the wince, and winced herself. And then the garden door opened and Nina preceded Angel back into the lobby. She turned to him and put a hand up to his cheek, and they looked at each other without saying anything. Then Nina turned away, and at the street door she said, "I _will_ come back tomorrow." Glancing at them, straightening up her shoulders, different tone, like they hadn't just heard the other one, "Goodbye then, Spike. Buffy. Be seeing you." 

When she was gone, Spike said, "That's a good woman." 

"Isn't it time for you two to go home? Your wounds are healed." 

Buffy looked a little stunned. She took a deep breath. "I didn't think there was any rush." 

"I'm not staying here either," Angel said, quiet, pugnacious. 

"Where are you going?" 

"I don't know. Away." He gestured at the vast lobby around them. "The Hyperion is a tear-down. And I'm sick of it." 

_He's sick of everything,_ Spike thought. Which idea should have cheered him up, just like Buffy sitting in his lap and kissing him and pulling his hand up her skirt should have cheered him up. Hadn't the other Buffy promised this? As he leapt across the dimensional void, she'd shouted after him that she was no liar, that she'd told him the truth. 

And it was. Only he couldn't trust it, quite. Couldn't ... quite ... just allow it. 

He looked at Buffy. She met his gaze, her eyes wide, shaded by confusion. God, he thought, the two of them were nothing but trouble, she should leave them both and flit back to Scotland and just put the bloody past in the past, where it belonged. He'd believed that last week before the battle against the Black Thorn, no reason to believe anything else now. 

"Do either of you ever take any down time?" Buffy said. "It's important. I've learned that, since .... and especially _now._ What happened was so big. You need to mourn, to recuperate." 

Angel stared. "When you died, I went to a monastery in Tibet." 

"See, maybe something like that would be good right now--for both of you, and me too, so that--" 

"It was full of ravenous demons who'd killed the monks and were impersonating them to prey on pilgrims." 

"Oh. Well, maybe not a monastery. Maybe we could take a house by the beach. Something with good drapes. And then we could swim at night under the stars, and--" 

Angel was still staring. " _We_?" 

"Nina too. The four of us. I'd like to get to know her, she seems really nice. What do you think?" 

"Your part here's done, Buffy. Just go." 

Angel started up the stairs. Buffy started after him, but Spike caught her arm. Murmured, "Better not." 

"But he's--" 

"He'll be angry at us a while for survivin'. At us an' himself. There's nothing we can do about that now." 

She turned to face him. Her eyes sparked up hot, but when she spoke, it was almost a whisper. "And you? Are you angry at me too? Because I showed up, and rescued you? Because I found out you're not dead? Because I want you?" 

For a girl who was so often obtuse, stubborn, wilfully blind when it came to the people around her, and him especially, she did undoubtedly have occasional flashes of intuitive brilliance. And this was one. He recognized the truth of it because the words struck his heart with the blunt sick force of a stake, making him blind, making him certain he was about to dissolve. 

The sensation only lasted a moment; when the boiling cleared from his field of vision, she was still there. 

He struggled to account for himself. Because there was no way he could just say _Yes. That's what I feel._ "It's not that I'm _tryin'_ to-- Love, I don't--" He put a hand up, needing to smooth her sad trembling lip with his thumb. 

But she wasn't there. 

  
  


***

Anya gave a little dinner party for six--Buffy and Spike, Faith and Xander, herself and Giles. Afterwards they played poker for a couple hours. The conversation was about the house Xander was renovating for Faith and him, about California politics and the latest sequel to _The Matrix._

Xander and Faith left first, to patrol. Anya lured Spike into the kitchen to help her stack the dishwasher. Buffy followed Giles into his study. 

"I'd say Spike seems no worse off for his adventures." 

"Yeah," she agreed. "He's stopped asking me about it. It's definitely last week's thing." 

"But you're not satisfied." 

"I dunno what happened to my poker face," she sighed. "I used to have one." 

"Yes, well. You've always been a bit more transparent where your heart was concerned." 

" _Please_ tell me that's not true." 

"Would it help if you could look in on the other Spike once more?" 

"Would it--how? When? What are you talking about?" 

"I've discussed the situation with the coven. Some of the members share my intrigue with this other Spike, and his soul-quest. We may be able to arrange a sort of 'time-out', a chance to meet with him again. Just briefly. But long enough for you to be reassured that he survived--" 

"--if he survived." 

"If he survived, yes. And for me to ask three or four key questions to aid my researches." 

"How?" 

The how turned out to be something about a dimensional signature and a pocket universe; when Giles was explaining it to her as he prepped the spell the following afternoon, she stopped listening after the first layer of explanation. They were in the training room behind the Magic Box; the shop was closed, and they were alone. Spike was at home; she'd told him she was running errands, and as he was generally still a bit drowsy and focused on Jemima in the hours between three and six in the afternoon, there was no need to excuse her absence in any more detail than that. 

If Giles' little shazam worked, they'd see the other Spike, and he'd see them, and they could talk a little, and then the spell would fall apart and she'd go home and hopefully her Spike would have put the lasagna in the oven at 450° and be giving Jem her bath, and she'd feel better about all this mish-mash and forget about it, The End, Amen. 

Of course it didn't go like that, and she was surprised that she thought for one red second that it would. One moment she was sitting on the pommel horse swinging her legs while Giles did the stinky-herbs-chanty thing, and the next she was--back home. In the kitchen, like she'd never left. There was her bag and her car keys on the counter and her sweater draped over a stool, and there was a voice, hers too, shouting in the living room. 

"Oh, no way! What is going on here!? What the hell _is_ this?!" 

Buffy froze. That was her. The other her--some other her. The idea that there might be, probably were, an infinite number of other hers in an infinite number of other realities made her a little dizzy. She glanced around at the door--maybe the thing to do was just slip out, get in the car, and go--where? Back to the Magic Box? Had she come back here in her car? There it was in the drive-way. She grabbed her things. 

The voice again, not so loud this time, and closer. She was in the foyer now, speaking in tones of talking-sense-to-myself-while-alone-in-the-house, the sound echoing up the staircase: "Okay. Okay, there's some good reason for this, and I'm going to figure out what it is, because this is not real. This is not real. It's some kind of--oh, Spike. What are we doing here?" 

"We live here, pet. What did you do to your hair?" 

Buffy dropped the bag and keys. _Shit._ That had to be her Spike, sure of where he belonged and not wise to anything out of place. Her next thought was Jemima--where was Jemima? She did _not_ need to see two Mammas. 

But there was no way to find her without being seen by the other Buffy, and-- 

"Back again, am I? Hullo." 

She spun around. Spike emerged from the cellar, confronting her with an enviable calm as he shut the door quietly behind him, as if he went dimension-hopping every day. Well, maybe he did. 

"Found myself in your basement just now. Least I've kept my bloody clothes this time. Dunno what's--" He stopped, cocking his head. Of course he heard the other Buffy talking a couple of yards away, she'd be in here any second now. Spike frowned at her. "What did you do, Slayer? What's brought us here?" 

She started to say that it was a mistake, that it was just supposed to be him and her and Giles and oh by the way she was so glad to see he was alive, but the other Buffy walked in just then, with the other Spike on her heels, and then there was the inevitable double-take, followed by the inevitable moment of astonished silence, finished with the inevitable everybody-talking-at-once. 

"Wait!" Buffy cried, throwing her arms out in a stop-the-truck gesture. "Wait, we _will_ sort this out, yes, but first--where is Jem? Spike, where is Jem?" 

Both Spikes made identical checking-behind-them motions that, in another context, would've been funny. They were easy to distinguish--hers was freshly-risen from sleep, barefoot and bed-headed and shirtless, the top button of his black jeans still undone. The other one was neatly combed, in black teeshirt and blue jeans and boots. Hers said, "She was just here--guess she's upstairs," and the other one said, "She wasn't in the cellar," and alterna-Buffy said "What gem? There's a gem?" 

Pushing past her, Buffy took the stairs two at a time. "Jemmie! Jemima!" 

She looked in all the rooms--she looked out the windows into the yard. Everything appeared normal, but Jemima wasn't there. A scream formed, tight and stabbing, expanded in the back of her throat, but she didn't let it out. She wasn't a screamer, she'd never been a screamer. Spike caught her elbow. "She can't have gone far. You look outside, I'll search again through the house." 

The other Buffy said, "I'll help you, it'll be faster. What exactly are we looking for?" 

"My--our daughter. Jemima. She's three." Brushing past her doppelganger again, Buffy clambered down the stairs, out into the front yard. The usual sounds of a Sunnydale weekday afternoon struck her--a lawnmower in the next street, sprinklers next door, a dog barking. She pounded towards the sidewalk, calling out-- 

\--and found herself immediately back in the kitchen. 

Just as she had a few minutes ago, when Giles was doing the spell. 

Huh. 

She went out again, still calling--and again found herself back where she'd begun. This time the other Buffy was just ahead of her. "We can't go up the block because this isn't real." 

"What?" She blinked at herself. The other Buffy was wearing a really darling little summer dress, a kelly green and white floral, Lilly Pulitzer, maybe, that hit just above the knee, and flat gold leather sandals and dangly gold earrings, and her hair was quite a bit shorter, a different shade of--huh. It looked great. Why hadn't she thought of going lighter and sort of shimmery like that? She should ask her what was the name of that shade. When--when she found Jemima. 

"It's not real," Other!Buffy repeated. "There's nothing outside of the house. That's why we can't really leave it. I don't know if you're real, either." She put a hand out, and poked Buffy in the shoulder. "Okay, you're not the First, anyhow. And I don't think you're a vampire." 

"Will was a vampire that time," Buffy said. "But we're not. Well, the Spikes are. But not us." 

"How do you know about that?" 

"I'm you. At least ... up to a point. The point. Where we diverge. " 

"So you say. This is some kind of spell. Because Sunnydale is gone. It's a hole in the ground." 

"My Sunnydale's still here." Buffy went to the front door again, stepped out onto the porch. What had happened? This wasn't the spell Giles had promised. And it wasn't quite like that time they got visited by vampire Willow either. 

Her Spike came up behind her again. "I don't even smell her. Not Jem, not you. Whole place just smells like ... nothing. This isn't our actual house." 

"Yeah," the other Spike agreed. "Might as well be a stage-set." 

"Really?" Maybe _this_ was the pocket dimension Giles had talked about. Except where was Giles? 

Details. 

She decided not to worry about Jemima. She _must_ be safe at home. 

"You're okay," she said to other!Spike. "And you two--" She gestured at Other!Buffy, who of course wasn't supposed to be part of this at all, "You two aren't just seeing each other again for the first time, right? Because I guess if you were there would be some drama, what with the--" 

They were all frowning at her now. Both Spikes, in tones of voice that were identical, like stereo, said "What've you done, Buffy?", and then eyed each other suspiciously. 

" _I_ didn't do anything. Giles said the spell would let us have a few minutes together, so I could see if you made it through that battle, and if you found me. Her. And Giles wanted to know--" She pulled up, remembering that she mustn't mention the soul. "--he wanted to know too. That you survived." 

The Spikes glanced at each other again, and then at her, still mirroring. They even mirrored their disgust at noticing it, with the same shrug and half turn. 

Other!Buffy stamped her foot. "What are you talking about? Why do I get the feeling I'm the only one here who is in the dark?" 

Buffy said to the other Spike, "You didn't tell her? Why wouldn't you even _tell_ her about this? Were you so _appalled_ at me--?" 

"No! _No!_ Just--it's been complicated." 

"What's been complicated?" Other!Buffy said. "What are you talking about?" 

He glanced at her, that propitious look she knew so well. "You an' me. Our reunion. Just hadn't got round to it yet, tellin' you certain ... bits." 

" _What_ bits? The bit where you spent some time in not-my-house-with-not-really-Buffy?" 

"I _am_ Buffy. And it is my house. I'm as real as you." 

"You keep saying!" She looked so angry. Buffy wished she wouldn't look like that, sound like that. Wished she'd relax a little. This was all really easy to understand if you just went with it. Similar things had happened before, after all, and been undone, and so would this be. 

"We could sit down," she suggested. "I could make us some coffee, while we sort through all this." 

"I don't want coffee. I want to get out of this _nightmare_." She gestured at the familiar surroundings. "I'd like to wake up now." 

She'd been distracted, Other!Buffy, from her initial reaction to finding herself back in her old house, in the place that had been destroyed, when Spike came downstairs. But now she was looking around with incredulous horror. She was a couple of shades paler to begin with than Buffy, not California-colored anymore, but she went paler still, her lips blanching. Her Spike sidled up close to her, didn't take her hand, but touched it shyly. "It's like before, yeah, seein' people again who were dead. Disturbin' an' unnatural. But you bore up, pet. That's all this is, it won't hurt you. Just walls. Just furniture." 

But she seemed not to hear his words of comfort; she broke and rushed back into the living room. "What _is_ this? This isn't how I left it! Why make all this and then _change_ it?" 

Buffy wanted to head her off, but it was too late; she'd already spotted the photographs on the mantle. All those framed photos of her and Spike with Jemima, Jemima with Dawn, Jemima with Giles, Anya, Faith, Xander, Tara, at every age from newborn to just last week. They were always adding new ones, to the point where the shelf was so crowded she couldn't even dust it anymore. 

Other!Buffy stared at each picture, from left to right. She gasped a couple of times, and Buffy wanted to interrupt her, but for some reason she couldn't talk, couldn't pull up her feet from the floor. It was just so damn odd, seeing this other version of herself. 

Other!Buffy picked up one of the photographs--Spike, Tara, and little Jem dressed in a fairy costume, with big gauzey wings, wielding a wand, last Christmas. She examined it as if it must contain some crucial hidden clue to putting an end to all of it. 

"Sunnydale didn't fall, and he didn't kill Tara either, I guess. Yeah, _right._ " She sighed, and put the photo back in its place. "Well well. Isn't this cozy, and domestic. You could even say normal. I used to want that so much, but nowadays I can barely remember what it felt like." She confronted her. "Do you think you're normal? With a nice capital N?" 

Before Buffy could try to answer, she turned back to her Spike. "You always wanted things from me you weren't ever going to get. But I _know_ this--playing house like in some bad sitcom--was never your fantasy." 

He glanced around, as if looking for some prop that would help him form a response. But it was her Spike, putting his fingers through his disordered hair, shuffling his feet, who said, "You're right. Never was my fantasy. Wanted you, your attention, the red-hotness of you, an' wanted to be part of what you do, wanted it big an' perverse an' bad an' wrong. Got it. Nothin' normal about it, slayer an' vamp livin' together, because we scratch each other's itch, fascinate each other, fit together, in bed an' out of it. Not normal, nor natural, but it's how we do it. Didn't look for a kiddie, but she came to us, an' she's our delight." 

Other!Buffy stared at him, looking not so much as if she heard what he said but as if she was reading it, like closed captions hanging in the air between them. She met his eyes for the briefest moment, then glanced away. A shiver rattled her. "I don't understand this. Is this supposed to be some kind of punishment?" She spun around and motioned at her Spike. "Are you _punishing_ me?" 

" _Me_?" 

"Because we just established that you're angry, that you don't really believe in me--" She stopped, as if she realized that she was airing dirty laundry in front of strangers. With a sharp head shake, she backed off it. "I don't understand this." 

Spike said, his voice gentle as if he was talking to a crazy person, "But you do, love. You know there's other worlds, with other yous an' mes in them. They're us--a different us. This place--dunno where it is exactly, but it's a replica of their house. During the battle in the alley, for a little while--I got thrown in here, and this one got switched into my place. I was going to tell you." This last was a lie; Buffy could see that he'd never meant to tell her anything of the sort. Just like she never meant to tell _her_ Spike about the soul. It was too big and inconvenient and better off just skipped. She could sympathize, really. 

Other!Buffy was eye-fucking her now. She gave herself a big, hopefully disarming smile. "This is sort of my fault. I was concerned about him. Giles was doing a little spell, so we could check and see if your Spike survived the battle. We were just supposed to get a look in, but instead we're all here. I'm sure Giles will sort it out and get us out of here. Any minute now, probably. I'm sorry to wig you out. We meant well." 

Other!Buffy continued to stare, and did not smile. At last she said, "You really have a kid." 

"I do. We do. Spike and me. And before you ask, yes, she's biologically ours. Warren and company shot me back in time. Me in Victorian London, _not good_ , the undergarments alone ... but I got back, and I was pregnant, and it was, like Spike said, all good." 

"Jem." 

"Jemima, yeah. Are you sure you don't want any coffee?" She wanted to say _Spike wouldn't try to punish you, you're wrong there, that's never been his M.O. and it never will be._ She wanted to say _But he does get angry. Not quickly. And not without cause._ She really wanted to know what was going on but there was no way to ask. Not right out, anyhow. 

"If there is any. Okay, yes." Other!Buffy's hard stance gave way little by little. She collapsed into an arm-chair, ground the heels of her hands against her eyelids. "I never thought to find myself back here. Sometimes in my dreams ...." 

Buffy went into the kitchen. The coffee was in the freezer, where she'd left it; she started it going, and scrounged around for something to serve with it, finding only a box of Animal Crackers she'd bought for Jemima and not yet given her. While she waited for the coffee to drip through, she whispered, "Giles, if you can see me--hear me--get us out of here. Quick like a bunny." 

"Talkin' to yourself, Slayer?" 

It was Other!Spike. He leaned against the counter island, his arms crossed, and regarded her with his cocked-head stance. 

"Whatever you do," she mouthed, " _Please_ don't mention the S." 

"Right you are." His smile was definitely more than a little mocking, and brought up the residual urge to smack him in the nose which even now was never entirely absent from her array of Spike-related responses. "This really all in aid of checkin' up on me?" 

"Yes. Though you'd think I'd know by now that magic really never goes well. Sorry." 

"You'd think." 

"It was Giles who suggested it though, not me." 

That arch smile again. He shrugged. "Still, s'touching." 

"Sorry," she repeated. "So you guys won your battle?" 

"You could say." He went to the cabinet, took down four coffee mugs. 

"And you and me are--talking?" 

"Could say that too." 

"I was right, wasn't I? That she's in love with you." 

"You could--" 

" _Spike_. You could be a little less annoying." 

"When am I ever?" 

"Well ... never. So tell me. I was right?" 

  
  
  
  


In the living room that wasn't actually his living room, Spike waited for the other Buffy to say something. 

She just sat there in the armchair, with her eyes closed, for the space of four long breaths. Then she got up and headed towards the kitchen. 

He stepped in her path. "Reckon we should give 'em a minute." 

"Why?" She glanced up, startled, and then once focused on his face, she stared. 

He flashed his best lewd little smile, the one that used to make her want to punch him full in the face. To distract her, to see if he could get a rise out of this Buffy the same as out of his own. 

She frowned, and stuck her hands in her dress pockets. "There's obviously something going on in there. They've met before. I'd think you'd be jealous." 

"She'll leave with the one she came with. Why don't _you_ stay a bit and we can get something going on between you an' me?" 

Gusty sigh. She was a cutie, even with her hair cut too short. 

"Is _that_ what this is about? I'm supposed to have some kind of 'moment' with you that I should really be having with _him_ , except I'm not?" 

"No supposed about it, far as I can see." 

"No? We don't share and care, and learn and grow?" She looked him up and down, and stepped back. He could guess why--because he was half-naked. Because he was who he was, and she was Buffy. It was undeniably interesting. "Are you _sure_? 

She searched his face and he guessed she wanted to find some difference, an additional scar, a line, a fleeting expression that would make him not quite Spike, so she could dismiss him, an illusion, a phantom. He'd forgotten a little bit how much contempt Buffy could conjure up for him. 

"You look good. Considerin' how hard your lot's been." 

Now she was definitely getting mad. "And what do you think you know about my 'lot'?" 

He gestured towards the kitchen. "That one told his heartbreakin' tale to my queen there, an' she told me. The highlights. Made her fret, to know there was other places where things went otherwise for she an' me." 

"Otherwise than this Ozzie and Harriet thing you seem to have going? Interesting. Quite the soap opera." She blinked, her face lighting with an angry realization. She pushed past him to barrel into the kitchen. 

The other Spike and Buffy weren't standing close to each other, but Spike still fancied there was something kind of guilty in the way their heads whipped around as they came in. Would be funny under slightly other circumstances. They knew each other, those two. 

The stranger Buffy slammed a fist against the counter top, making the four coffee cups jump. "Tara's death, Anya's death, Xander's eye, the end of Sunnydale--and every _other_ lousy thing that's happened since I got yanked back from the dead--turns out it's all _my_ fault! Because I was just so damn stubborn about Spike. Why, if I'd just set up housekeeping with him, had a _baby_ with him, lived the Big Lovey-Dovey Normal Thing with him, everyone would be intact!" She tapped her temple. "I can be so dumb. Why didn't I realize it sooner? But I get the message now--I was supposed to save the world _on my back_!"

Spike thought his Buffy's eyes would pop out of her poor face and ricochet off the walls. She didn't move, but she _trembled_ , her lips parted, no breath in them. 

He moved towards her, thinking he was going to catch her in a faint. Her cheeks were the color of chalk. 

The other Buffy turned on her Spike. "You're not bugged too? Don't you get how this Sunnydale _charade_ makes a mockery of what we went through?!" 

That made him fidget a bit. "Don't take this for an object lesson. Just a bout of random magic, put us here. These two have nothin' to do with us, Slayer." 

"Oh _please._ Even if it wasn't you, _someone's_ rubbing my nose in this! Of all the Buffys in all the worlds, I walk into _her_ house? Stepford Buffy. The good little wifey, with your bite scars on her neck and your _kid_ on her hip and--" 

She ducked under his arm so fast that the roundhouse was delivered before Spike even realized she'd moved. His Buffy's fist connected with her counterpart's face with a heavy sickening _wrhump_ like a sharp kick to a football. Pissed-off!Buffy went down hard, a fine spray of her nose blood misting across Spike's arms and chest and the white coffee mugs on the counter. 

For a few seconds the loudest sound in the kitchen was the women's ragged breathing. One sprawled on the floor, her palm jammed against her crumpled nose, the other held back by him, panting and throbbing. He could smell them both, the same high sweet aroma of emotional flush, not yet turned rank. 

The other Spike said, "Wasn't me brought us here, Slayer." 

She looked up at him, as the blood trickled out between her fingers. ""But you _were_ here. With her. No wonder ... no wonder you didn't tell me. I guess it explains why you've been all hinky with me." She rose, smearing blood on her dress, and went to the sink. 

He stayed calm, even a little aloof. "Doesn't explain anything." 

"No?" She spoke into the running water, splashing her face. 

" _No._ They're nothing like us. _This_ one doesn't even have--" 

"Hey!" The other Buffy yelled. "Can we just _stop_? This compare-and-contrast isn't getting us anywhere!" 

She sprang into motion, going to the other one, dabbing at her with a dish towel. "Look, I'm sorry I hit you. Let's just concentrate on getting out of this place and back where we all belong now." 

"How do we do that?" 

"I don't know. But we can find you a clean dress, upstairs." 

The two Buffys exited the kitchen, one warily leading, the other warily following. Spike heard their identical treads going up the steps. The other Spike was listening too. Their eyes met. 

"That what you really reckon? That we're nothin' alike?" 

He frowned. "Like she said--let's let it alone." 

"I fought your apocalypse. Got your taste in clothes, an' slayers, an' all. Don't see how you're not me an' I'm not you, just because we took a different path a couple years back." 

"That's just fine. You're comfortable, ain't you? You don't need to know." 

"Don't I? My queen was mighty kind to you. We're in this soddin' fix because she couldn't quit worrying an' wondering about you." 

The other Spike looked a little sheepish at this, but he shook his head. "Buffy's sweet that way." 

"Mine is. Yours not so much, I'd say."  
  
  
  


"Are these your clothes? I guess everything in here is yours." 

"Yeah." Now she'd punched the other Buffy in the face, she felt worse. It was dumb to lose control of herself like that. Especially when this harder, sleeker Buffy, this Buffy who had held out against Spike, was already riding the high horse of assumed moral superiority, which, hello, who was to say she had any right to do that? 

Darn it. 

"Take anything you like. I mean ... this isn't _really_ my house or my stuff, so it probably won't matter anyway, once Giles undoes the spell." 

Instead of joining her at the open closet to look for something, the other Buffy stood by the bedside table, where the candles Spike liked flickered just the way they did in her real house. She looked at the photograph Spike kept there, Buffy, Dawn, and Jemima, their hair shiny and their smiles warm, in a big nine by twelve silver frame. 

"So, he got you pregnant somehow. And then you had to live with him. That's your story." 

"That's not how it went at all." Even as she corrected her, the assumption made Buffy squirm. Was it _so_ terrible that she'd made a life with Spike, that this other her had to find reasons why she'd been backed into it? 

"No?" Other!Buffy glanced up with a frown. She thought, _Is that what_ I _look like?_ So icy and cheesed-off? God. Probably. Yeah. Frequently. 

So, two could shoot that look. "Is that really what you think?" 

The other Buffy shook her head, her expression clouding over. "I don't even know why I'm _talking_ to you. You're not real, this doesn't change anything. It's not like I'm supposed to learn some lesson from it." She laughed, unkindly. "I mean, there is no possible version of _me_ who would pretend to raise a kid with _him._ " 

"I live with him because I fell in love. I don't claim he's good with a capital G, but when I came back from my grave, he was good to me. Jem came a little later. And Spike had nothing to do with it." 

"Whatever." 

"No, not _whatever._ Don't treat me like I'm fake, you know I'm not. And he happens to be a very good father." 

"A very good father ... yeah. Oh, sure. I don't even know what that _means_. I've never experienced a good father." 

"It means--" 

Other!Buffy was giving her such a strange look now, as she just talked over her. "I thought he was dead, okay? I came to LA as soon as I heard otherwise! _He's_ the one who's holding back now." She dropped onto the side of the bed, cradled her face in her hands. "I don't really know why." 

_Uh, yeah, and now I'm supposed to be all sympathetic, after you insulted me two minutes ago? Right._ She rooted through the hanging clothes. "Here, you can wear this one." 

Other!Buffy looked up, and her eyes were glistening a little, but she wasn't crying. _Oh no. She doesn't cry over_ Spike. _No way._

"That's ... that's a nice dress." 

"It's just Ann Taylor Loft." 

She rose and came to get it. Held it up, then held it against her body as she glanced into the mirror. "I couldn't ... we couldn't. It just--it just wasn't to be. He _knows_ that. Then came the big one--the end of Sunnydale. The end of Spike. He _chose_ to die there--I didn't force him!" 

"I believe you." 

"But now we have a second chance, so why is he pushing me away?" Other!Buffy was frowning again. "It's something _you_ said to him, or showed him--it was _this_ , wasn't it? That's made him all don't-touch-me. What, does he think I'm going to start popping out vampire spawn?" 

"Jemmie isn't a vampire. And she has nothing to do with your problem." 

"So what is it?" 

God, this was making her tired. Buffy didn't want to tell her. She didn't want to open her mouth and say, _It's about the soul._ The mystery of it, Spike with a soul, Spike _conscience-struck_ , it wigged her out. It was sort of like finding out Santa Claus wasn't real, only in reverse. No, of course it wasn't like that, it was like ... it was like finding out she was the slayer. That she could slay vampires. That she _had_ to. Her worldview turned upside down and shaken until it rattled. 

"I don't know what your story is, really. I only know it's different than mine. Different events. Different repercussions." 

"He's angry at me because he saw a place where he got everything from me he ever wanted. If you could accept him, why not me?" 

"I don't think so." _No, it's the exact opposite, actually._ She really didn't want to have to say it. 

Other!Buffy slipped off her dress. She was very thin, the thinness Buffy knew Spike didn't like, the thinness that when she got that way, her friends started cooking for her. Stopping by with fresh-baked brownies. She hadn't been that skinny in a while. She was also paler, and wearing extremely expensive, wispy underwear, the kind of underwear you put on when you expected your lover to tear it off with his teeth, like she'd had on the other day, for the anniversary. Seeing it made her believe that whatever else was going on, this other Buffy was in love. Maybe she hadn't been before, but she was now. 

Other!Buffy slipped the new dress on. It was a soft yellow, gathered under the breasts, a little bit poofy, and hit just above the knee. Together they turned towards the mirror. Regarded each other's reflections. 

"I should probably let my hair grow, right?" Other!Buffy said. 

"You should do what feels right." 

"I just can't imagine having a baby. Not with him, not with anybody. I used to be able to think of it, but since ...." She squinched her nose, then winced, because her nose was broken. It was a little swollen, the bruise shadowing it on either side. She touched it, and smiled. "God, I sound insane, don't I? All scatty." 

"I'm really sorry I punched you." 

"Nah, I'd have reacted the same way." She laughed then. "Because I'm you! And you're me! Right?" 

Their eyes met in the mirror, questioning, wanting reassurance. 

Buffy said, "Not quite." 

"Yeah," Other!Buffy said. "Not quite." 

"After Willow brought me--us--back from the dead. Our paths don't match up." 

"Spike told you." 

"Some of it, yes." 

They glanced at each other again. The reflection thing helped. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
[[[For later]]]] 

"You know there's other dimensions, yeah, with other versions of ourselves leadin' variations on our lives?" 

"Uh ... yeah. That's come up once or twice." 

"During the battle, while Illyria was throwing her interdimensional mojo around, I got switched. One second I was attacking the dragon an' the next I was back in Sunnydale." 

"Sunnydale's gone." 

"But this Sunnydale wasn't gone. It was all intact. I found myself in bed in your house. In the master bedroom, what was once your mum's, an' then Willow an' Tara's. Only it was our room. We lived there together, like married people, an' ... an' we had a kid." 

Buffy snorted. "What were you on? There must've been something trippy in the air in that alley. You were hallucinating." 

" _No._ Was in a different reality." 

Buffy raised her head up off his shoulder, frowned at him. He wasn't sure from her expression whether she was incredulous or merely outraged at what he was describing. 

"Proof is--why aren't I burnt, as well as broken? You know who's burnt--t'other Spike. The one from there, who popped into my place. I saw him before I went back through the portal--he was ridin' the dragon an' was scorched from stem to stern, 'bout to drop off, when I switched us back. I took the fall, but the dragon didn't get a chance to burn me." 

"Huh." Another frown. "But that doesn't _prove_ anything. I mean, you may have been sucked into another dimension for a while, but how do you know what you saw there was real? First of all, vampires don't have children." 

"That's what I thought at first, but then ... the longer I was there, the more convincing it all was." 

"But a kid!" 

"She said there was time travel involved ... I knocked her up while I was still alive." Saying this out loud he was struck again by how crazy it was. He was sorry he'd brought it up. The more Buffy asked him about it, the worse it would sound. Like a pathetic fantasy of his. She'd probably get out of bed and walk out of the room and never come back. 

"What kind of kid?" 

"Human." 

"Duh. Boy or girl?" 

"Was a little girl. 'Bout three. Took after you she did, same smile, an' your energy, an' ..." He hadn't paid much attention to Jemima, she'd made him too uncomfortable, but now he wished he had; he wished he'd taken a little time out to talk to her. His--anyway--Spike's child. Spike and Buffy's impossible little miracle. "Look, I know you don't believe me. Forget it." 

"Who said I didn't believe you?" 

"Dunno what you must think of me--" 

"I think you're an annoying pain in my ass, like I've always thought. An annoying pain in my ass I'm not letting out of my sight again. C'mon Spike, don't clam up. There was another me there? What happened?" 

"Was bloody strange. I didn't meet up with her right away. She was just leavin' as I woke up there, so first one I met was the kid, an' then ... Tara. Tara was alive, an' livin' in the house with us." 

"Huh." 

He wondered if that was now Buffy's all-purpose reaction remark. "She left pretty quick too, but then there was a whole parade of others showin' up--Xander, Faith, Anya. Giles, later on. Xander an' Faith were lovers. Giles was married to Anya. An' they were all ...." He didn't want to finish this sentence. If he could've raised a blush, he'd have been the color of a beet. 

"What? They were all polka-dotted? Had their heads on backwards?" 

"Might as well have. ... they ... were our friends. I mean, _my_ friends. Treated me like ... Xander confided in me." 

Buffy blinked. Her eyes clouded over, her heartbeat sped up. 

"The thing about it that was different from our world ... those weeks after she came back from the dead. She ... the other Buffy ... she fell for me, took up with me in front of the others. An' the others fell in line somehow. Was our fifth anniversary that day, an' they treated me like any other member of the Scoobies. Even though ... even though that Spike had no soul." 

  
  


**End of incomplete story**


End file.
